The Witch of Jura
by StoryGardener
Summary: Kirk's task is to observe the invasion of Jura. As usual, things don't go quite as planned. Hurt!Jim in a medieval setting. No slash.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

The market place was shoulder-to-shoulder crowded. Since the invasion four days ago, ever more residents came out to congregate here, in this spacious, sun-kissed central square of their small city. Kirk had observed their growing numbers, every evening, from the little balcony of the Inn. They also arrived earlier and left later, or almost not at all, since the warm weather allowed the hubbub to continue deep into the mornings.

He had an idea about why that was: their century-old routines were shaken, _they_ were shaken, and they looked for familiarity in companionship.

But how strangely these people did that!

The away team had arrived three days before the invasion, but that had been plenty of time for them to sample some of the ways of the Juras. They were an impassive people. Every transaction, from accepting payment to a hand in wedding (they had attended one) was done in an entirely dispassionate way. The Juras lived their lives much like humans – from whom they were superficially indistinguishable - but it was like no one was particularly interested. This temperament slowed everything down. Life here was a saunter. Even the way the Juras moved was slow, unhurried.

Off-worlders, who had been visiting for over a century, had introduced the knowledge of other races, space travel and advanced technologies, yet the Juras hadn't adopted any of these. Not out of some vehement Luddism, because there were some modern elements, like gas lighting, and he'd glimpsed a radio, but simply because they couldn't be bothered. As a result, culturally and technologically, this was predominantly fourteenth century Earth, but without the wars over land and religion. The small, nearly stagnant population was distributed in peaceful rural fiefdoms around walled cities. This small capitol was a large as cities got on Jura.

The planet was devoid of minerals but somewhat prosperous, in that there was no poverty and was beautiful and blessed with a perfect climate, good soils and a wholesome air. Still there was only a limited mix of visitors from other planets and races, doing small trade or stopping over. None of them were particularly glad to be here and left as soon as they could. Kirk's host, the human inn-keeper Lamok, boasted that he had been here longer than any off-worlder, _ever, _in the history of Jura. Yet this boast was immediately followed by the vow that he would leave his solid business before he totally lost his mind to boredom.

"It's not like Vulcans, James," the colorful Lamok had complained. "It's not that they're formal or even emotionless. There _is_ emotion, but it's lukewarm, neither here nor there! They're so _dull_. Even if you shake 'em by the shoulders – and believe, I've done so often! - they do not _react_. What's the _point_, James? What's the _point_!"

"James" had taken an instead dislike to this man. As those first days on Jura wore on, he became more and more sensitive to criticism of these people. He didn't know why. He chafed silently when Lamok or other off-worlders mocked the Juras. His own team was warned not to indulge in any derision. Even the Doctor knew he was playing with fire if he tried.

McCoy assured him these people were not drugged and were perfectly healthy.

"Healthier than many a race, since there are no vices, Jim," and then, under his breath, "and no virtues either."

Kirk bit his tongue. Perhaps it was his certain knowledge that these people were about to be brutally raided, and that he would do nothing about it. Star Fleet had sent them to Jura to observe this invasion, to observe the invaders.

_Not _to stop them.

_Not _to interfere.

_Not _to observe the Juras either.

"What is the perfect lab rat?" Kirk asked on their second night, sitting with Spock and McCoy on the balcony. The air was fragrant with the climbing roses. The square beneath them was still deserted at that point.

"I don't know, Jim. One that behaves?" McCoy said.

"One that no one cares much about," Kirk said morosely.

"Captain," Spock said, "the _Klingons_ care."

"They just care about redrawing the lines between them and us. Jura just happens to be behind the new line."

"You really _like_ these people, Jim?" McCoy asked.

Kirk thought for a second or two, gazing out over the square, the pools of flickering gas light on the cobblestones.

"I see paradise, Bones. And I see a whole lot of off-worlders complaining about the snake being missing. Well, they'll have their snake soon, and all this will be destroyed for a mere line in the sand."

"I'll tell you what I see," said McCoy with concern in his voice. "I see a Captain who's been pushed around too much the last couple of months and is suffering from the paradise syndrome. Listen, Jim, the Juras are better equipped to deal with marauding Klingons than any other people in the universe. They'll deal with them the same way they deal with everything else. They _won't care_."

Jim Kirk had said nothing.

Five days later, sitting on the same balcony, he saw something quite different. He saw these usually private people thronging the square.

_Yes_, they were passive.

_Yes_, they moved like automatons on run-down batteries.

_Yes_, they seemed not to care.

But they had to care because _he_ cared. Because Spock and McCoy had had to hold him back when the Klingon Governor decapitated the Mayor in the middle of that sun-kissed square.

The Mayor had cared. Kirk had seen that in his dreamy eyes just before the ax came down.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

So as not to attract too much attention, their landing party of seven had taken rooms in three different inns. McCoy and Kirk were travelers on a stop-over at Lamok's Orchard Inn, where Spock had registered a day later as a trader unknown to them, but quickly drawn into their group. The rest of the landing party consisted of a psychologist and a political scientist, each paired with a Diplomatic Officer. During the day, their teams spread out in the city, observing Klingon interaction with the population and analyzing governmental decisions. Kirk and his group focused on tactical movements and weapons stockpiles.

Every afternoon they compared notes in the nook of a terrace cafe on the edge of the square. These meetings had become easier as the houses emptied and the streets filled. They just had to keep their conversation dispassionate and they blended right in.

"I'm surprised the Klingons have not taken away their right to assembly, or set a curfew at least," observed Carol Shafer, the psychologist.

"From your report, Mister Spock, it seems that neither have they organized their troops or secured their weapons depots very well," added Diplomatic Officer Bill Holt.

"And I get the idea they sent their most ill-experienced soldiers and administrators," said his counterpart, Sam Sturgeon. "Their so-called Governor made a big show of executing the Mayor, then promptly left."

"It all fits," Spock said. "They are not seeing these people as a threat."

"An astute observation on their part, if you ask me," said McCoy. "No one raised a finger when they slaughtered the mayor. No protest, no outcry, not even a murmur. Life simply—continued."

"It makes you wonder why we're here, then," said Kirk, finally breaking his silence. He sounded too annoyed to his own ear, but he couldn't help but voice his frustration. "The objective was to learn how Klingons invade, how people react, how Klingons counter-react. _This _is obviously not a representative situation."

"You're correct, Captain Kirk," said the political scientist, Marcus Esner. "It isn't representative, but you have to admit that the circumstances are ideal for us, as observers. When we're done we'll just extrapolate from our data to more volatile situations."

Kirk breathed in and willed himself not to respond. Here was the kind of _disinterest _that he truly abhorred. The two civilian scientists were trained to be objective and uninvolved. The Diplomatic Officers, though officers, were skilled at remaining impartial. Spock, he knew, was keeping his emotions, whatever they were, in check. Bones was optimistic because he believed the Juras' passivity afforded them optimal resilience in this kind of situation.

That left only Kirk to feel antsy and frustrated with inaction. He was a soldier, he saw injustice, he needed to act. He couldn't wait to get out of here – and they would, in three days' time – but he knew the whole experience would leave a bad taste in his mouth for a long time to come.

"Look!" Holt hissed, gazing at something over Kirk's shoulder.

Kirk turned in his chair and looked through the vine covered trellis that shielded their table from the street. A column of Klingons, ten rows, three abreast, was moving through the square. From his vantage point above the square, the column looked like a fat and ravenous caterpillar moving through an apple, devouring. Juras were shoved aside or trod underfoot. A hush was falling over the square, accentuating the thump of the soldiers' boots on the pavement, the clang of their chain mail.

"We had better go now, Captain," Spock advised quietly.

"Yes," said Kirk, rising from his chair. "Take care, they seem to be gearing up for something."

000000000

Any group over two might seem suspicious, so Spock was going to skirt the square by way of the arcades, while Kirk and McCoy would cut through the crowd.

"Let's stay well away from that column," Kirk warned.

They walked a little apart, often parting around a Jura. Kirk was preoccupied, trying to get a feel for the tension in the air. In the eerie silence that had fallen since the Klingons had marched in, the crowd seemed to alive with... was it panic? He couldn't put his finger on it, but it was making his skin crawl. He pulled the hood of his coat over his head so he could observe somewhat unseen the faces of those he passed. This shopkeeper, did he look worried? That woman with the packages strapped to her back, was there something sad in her eyes?

He appeared out of nowhere, a flash of black and gold in the corner of Kirk's eye. Kirk instantly looked down and kept walking as the Klingon Commander passed him by. A few seconds during which his heart beat loudly in his ears...

"_HALT_!"

Everyone stopped in their tracks. The roar bounced off the buildings that lined the silent square.

Kirk winced, stopped and kept his head down. Because of the hood he couldn't see what was going on behind his back. He glanced sideways at McCoy who was a few feet away, turned toward him, looking panicked. Kirk shot him a warning glance. The Doctor got the hint and looked away.

A heavy hand landed on his shoulder.

"You!" the Klingon barked into Kirk's ear.

His hood was pulled away and there was the big face, the black eyes, right up close. Kirk squashed his first reaction, which was to elbow the Klingon and make a run for it. This particular Klingon was taller by a head and perhaps twice his weight. So he held his breath and tried to adopt the dull stare of the Jura.

"I said no one, NO ONE, move!" the Commander called out. "Brigadier! To me!"

He faced Kirk again, squinting suspiciously.

"You looked... _curious_," he breathed.

Kirk looked up at his assailant, like he knew a Jura would, but he tried to focus on some point behind the other's eyes, hoping it would look like a vacant stare. He said nothing for fear that his voice would betray him.

"Identify your-" the Commander began, but then he stopped, and his eyes widened, and he _smiled. _"Well, well. No need. You are _Captain Kirk_!"

Kirk made his move, aiming for the solar plexus. But before his fist could make contact it was intercepted by the Klingon's huge hand. With his other hand he grabbed Kirk's forearm and yanked it. Kirk rotated, twisting his back to avoid the pain and before he knew it the Klingon was behind him. He bit down as the Klingon twisted his arm behind his back. His left hand clawed pointlessly at the Commander's tunic.

"Too late, Kirk," the Klingon whispered into his ear. "And it looks like we caught another one."

Kirk turned his head to McCoy immediately. The Doctor was being restrained by a Klingon soldier. The anger and concern in his eyes had given him away.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N. Warning: torture. Hence the new rating. **

**Chapter 3**

"SHOOT ANYONE WHO MOVES!" the Klingon Commander roared to the crowded but pin-drop silent square. He tightened his grip on Kirk's right arm, making the Captain gasp with pain.

A Klingon soldier came running.

"Brigadier, block off the exits to the square and line everyone up in a circle around me."

The Brigadier saluted and started talking into his communicator. Kirk could hear the column break up into all directions.

"Now, back to you," the Commander sneered.

Still twisting his arm, he forced Kirk down onto his knees, then grabbed a handful of his hair and pulling his head back so his ear was right next to the Klingon's lips.

"There are more of you," the Klingon breathed. "How many, Kirk?"

"Just us two!" Kirk spat through clenched teeth.

The crowd was being pushed and shoved to form a large rough circle of two or three thick all around them. Kirk could see only the section in front of him, but there must have been hundreds of them. He scanned their faces, afraid to see his people among them and, seeing those passive expressions, the dull eyes, he suddenly understood.

_They_ would do nothing. His pain was nothing to them just like the pain of their own Mayor had been nothing to them.

But _his_ people, they would react.

Anger and panic overcame him and he fought. It was futile, the Klingon was much stronger than him and there was no escaping from his grip. His free hand grabbed air, clothing. The Commander let him struggle a bit, toying with him. Then, tiring of the game, he yanked the arm cruelly up and Kirk bit down on a cry, froze.

The Klingon laughed softly in his ear.

The Brigadier reappeared.

"Ready, Commander," he announced.

"Put your men in front of them so they can see everyone clearly." Then he whispered: "Let's give them a show, shall we, Captain? _Klingon warriors, observe them!_"

He straightened, tightening his grip on Kirk's wrist but releasing his hair and for a moment also easing the tension on the arm, allowing the Captain breath for one word:

"No-"

The Klingon planted his boot in Kirk's back and pushed him down so his cheek ground against the cobblestones while pulling the arm toward himself, stretching and twisting it.

Kirk gasped and bit down, but after seconds his resolve gave away and he groaned desperately into the dust as his shoulder dislocated and muscles and ligaments tore.

00000000000

None of the landing party had escaped the cordon. At least Spock had managed to maneuver himself to the back of one of the denser segments of the line-up, only a few yards from the arcade cluttered with carts, boxes, benches.

He took one last second to spot each of his group in the circle, then kept his eyes on what was happening at the center of the circle. Not because he wanted to see the public torture of his Captain at the hands of the Klingon Commander, but because that was what the Juras were doing. It was imperative now that he not give himself away to the Klingon soldier patrolling the back of the line behind him and the other one pacing in front.

Captain Kirk was holding out against the pain being inflicted on him, and Spock was trying to do the same while registering the misshapen angles in the Captain's arm, the bulge in his shoulder.

The Klingon soldier scrutinized his face. Spock steeled himself to his friend's agony, set his eyes on infinity. The soldier's gaze moved to the Jura next to him.

"Here!" another soldier, on the other side of the circle, called out. He pulled out Carol Shafer.

"And here!" Not a mere three feet away from her, Holt was also being plucked from the line-up.

Incredibly, the Captain had heard. Spock couldn't see his face, which was turned away from him, but he heard his moan turn angry, desperate. His free left hand was clawing at the cobblestones to find some sort of handhold.

The Klingon Commander laughed and relaxed the tension on the arm a little. Kirk greedily drew in rasping, shallow breaths.

"So we found two more," the Klingon spat down at his victim. "How many more?" he added with mock politeness. Kirk said nothing. "How– many – _more_!" the Klingon repeated, with each word twisting the deformed arm, making Kirk's whole body shake under his boot.

"_Fuck you_!" the Captain roared in anger and pain.

The Commander's reaction was so shockingly quick and ruthless that Spock could not help but flinch. The soldier in front of him was looking at someone else but seemed to have spotted his reaction and glanced over. Spock quickly ducked behind a bulky Jura, taking his chances that the soldier behind him was instead paying attention to the dreadful scene at the center of the circle. From his concealed spot, Spock could see his Klingon soldier frown, search the crowd with his eyes. Any second now he would take a step closer and see him.

"Here!" someone yelled, quite close by, and Spock's soldier turned his head to look.  
In one fluid movement Spock slid backwards out of the line-up, dropped down and rolled away into the cool shadow underneath a cart. He lay still, listening.

The crowd was absolutely silent, but from their center came Jim's horrified screams, the desperate shouts of Doctor McCoy, Officer Holt and scientists Shafer and Esner, and the demonic laughter of the Klingon Commander.

00000000000

McCoy knew he should observe the injury upon injury done to his Captain, anticipate treatments and complications, but something exploded in his brain as his heart broke and he yelled in protest and frustration. It was futile. Like the others he was held down on his knees, hands tied behind his back.

Jim had stopped screaming and writhed, soundlessly, as the Klingon Commander forced one last merciless twist onto that grotesquely deformed, broken arm. His face, turned toward his people, was ashen. His wide-open , horrified eyes were locked onto McCoy but clearly didn't register the Doctor.

Then his eyelids fluttered.

The Commander had seen.

"Stay with me, Kirk!" he yelled, giving the Captain a vicious kick in the side, and Kirk groaned. "We aren't done yet."

By the twisted arm, he pulled Kirk back up to his knees. Kirk's eyes flew open to the pain but he was like a limp puppet on a string. The Commander went down on a knee behind him and threw an arm around his neck to hold him up. Then he pulled something from his knee-high boot.

It was a short, leather rope.

"You think these people are worth fighting for, don't you, Kirk?" He roughly looped the end of the rope around Kirk's broken left wrist. "But I will show you they're not."

The Klingon waited for a few seconds, relishing the tremor in Kirk's body pressed so close.

McCoy renewed his struggle.

"Jim!" he yelled.

The Commander pulled the broken arm tightly against Kirk's back, threaded the rope under his good arm, over his chest and back round again to the broken elbow, where he tightened it with a jerk and fastened it with a knot.

The Captain shook, seizing with the pain, arching his back, his neck. His eyes were rolling up into his head, his mouth was streak of torment. McCoy wished he'd pass out, but he knew Kirk would hold on to see what happened to his crew, thinking he could still do something for them, and simply to spite his tormenter.

This tormenter couldn't care less. Done, he held the Captain up to face the crowd.

"Do you see that? Look at them. Are you _seeing_ them? They don't care about your pain, your humiliation!"

Content, the Commander stood up again and looked at the other humans.

"Put them in the jail!" he ordered.

McCoy stopped struggling when his captor elbowed him in the side. Almost losing his footing he looked back and saw the Commander walk around to face Kirk, grasp the rope over Kirk's chest and pull him to his feet like he was a feather. Kirk's head fell back, his legs gave out, and finally he lost consciousness.

The last thing McCoy saw through his tears of hate and despair were the faces of the Juras as they stood aside to let the column through.

Uncaring. Hollow.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

It was his chattering teeth that brought him back to consciousness. Shivering, Kirk pried open his eyes, struggled to get his bearings. He was slumped in an awkward position against a rough wall in a dark, dank room. On the cold stone floor right next to him there was a slick puddle.

_Must've be sick while unconscious, _he thought groggily.

He felt incredibly stiff and—disconnected somehow, like half of his chest was numbed, and he couldn't feel his right arm at all. Another shiver ran through him and he started to move to find a more comfortable position.

_Big mistake!_

Red hot pain shot through his right shoulder and arm, drawing a trembling, wheezing gasp.

"Ah, you're back," said a voice, strangely distant.

Feeling every torn muscle, every fracture, every bone rubbing against bone and nerve, Kirk chose to ignore the person who had spoken and concentrated instead on quickly but carefully sitting up, with his uninjured side against the wall. Having done that, he set himself to breathing through the pain. The cold stone of the wall cooled his cheek.

Footsteps, echoing.

He turned his head as much as he could without escalating the pain and looked over, blinked. The Klingon Commander stood at the end of it, incredibly colossal, looking at him. The room lengthened, stretched, narrowed, grew higher. Kirk tried to swallow the clot that pushed from his gut into his throat but it was too late. He leaned forward and vomited acid bile.

"Tsk tsk tsk," the voice tutted, faraway. "You're experiencing the effects of the stimulant."

Kirk spat and looked in that direction again but the room spun so much he had to close his eyes and concentrate on his breathing.

"We don't want you to pass out from the pain every five seconds now, do we? It's formulated for Klingons, but I lowered the dosage."

Suddenly the Klingon was hovering over him, too close. Fingers threaded themselves through the rope that was tied over his chest. With his free hand Kirk grabbed onto the wrist, trying to hold it off, but all he could do was hold _on_ to it as he was pulled to his feet.

The shock wave of pain took his breath away, but his aggressor was unrelenting as he dragged Kirk to the other side of the room. Kirk cried out when the Klingon pushed him down onto a stool.

"What is your objective here?" the Klingon yelled into his face.

Kirk was holding on to that wrist like it was a life buoy. The Klingon sneered in disgust and peeled off Kirk's fingers, let go of the harness and stepped away. Having lost his anchor, Kirk's free hand grasped the edge of the seat to maintain his balance.

_Don't fall off. It would hurt._

"You disgust me, Kirk," the Klingon sneered, looking at his own dirtied hand. "I always wanted to meet you on the battlefield, but _this_, this is pitiful. You are weak and filthy!"

Kirk looked up into the dark face, and smirked.

"At least _I'_ve got personal charm!"

In one smooth motion the Klingon grasped the harness at Kirk's chest with one hand and with the other dealt him a backhanded blow to the side of the head.

Kirk spat a mouthful of blood.

"Oh look," he mocked, "now you've also got blood on your hand!"

"You don't know when you're beaten, Captain," the Commander growled, shaking the harness.

Then he calmed himself and let go.

Kirk's balance on the stool was getting precarious.

"But you are. _Beaten,_" the Klingon continued, a bit sadly. "Now you will tell me what your objective is, when you were dropped off, where your ship is now, and everything you know about these people."

"Yeah, right," Kirk scoffed at the Klingon's chest. He would have punched the man, right _there_, in the middle of that massive chest, and even with his left arm might have made an impact, but he knew he had to hold on.

He steeled himself for another blow, but the Commander had turned toward the table, where he now rolled up his sleeves and started washing his hands in a basin. Kirk took the time to recover a little. Then he saw the objects on the table and swallowed. He was about to get to his feet when the Commander turned again, holding up one of the scalpels.

"We try to keep it clean but it's difficult in these medieval conditions, you understand?"

The scalpel flashed and came down. Kirk grabbed for it with his free hand and held it off, for a few seconds, as the blade cut, like butter, through the flesh of his fingers. Yelling he let go of it and gripped instead the Klingon's wrist.

Another second of useless struggle and the knife's tip plunged, through his white shirt, deep into the pectoral muscle where it attaches to the clavicle.

The pain was _electric._ Kirk convulsed soundlessly, his teeth glued together like he had touched a live wire, his bleeding hand clamped onto the Klingon's wrist the only thing holding him up.

He didn't know how long it had gone on, but only when the scalpel retracted could he suck in some much-needed air. His blood-slick hand slipped off the Klingon's wrist but the Klingon grabbed the harness to keep him from falling.

"The reason why you are here, Captain," the Klingon demanded.

Kirk said nothing, ground his teeth.

"I will cut that muscle, all the way through. You know that. _Slowly_, so you won't lose consciousness. And then I will dislocate your other shoulder, and I will do the same, only this time I will find the nerves, and slice _them_ up. One—by—one. And still you will be conscious. You will _pray_ for oblivion but the drug will keep it from you."

Kirk looked the Commander in the eye.

"You know you've not even introduced yourself?" he croaked, barely audible.

The Commander drew himself up.

"I am Themak! Of the Great House of Antaak! And I will make my House even greater by bringing home such a prize: Captain Kirk _and the Enterprise._"

Kirk laughed, at first flinchingly, then whole-heartedly, till he sounded deafening even to his own ears.

"Wrong! You will _shame_ the House of Antaak! You will fail like so many have done before you!" he yelled.

The blow to his head lifted him clean off the stool. He slammed hard into the stone floor and instantly got what he wanted.

Oblivion.


	5. Chapter 5

**Warning. More torture but hilarity ensues.**

**Chapter 5**

When he opened his eyes next, it turned out things hadn't gotten any better. Not that he had expected they would, but it was a disappointment nevertheless. He was lying on the floor where he had fallen, though he had turned (or had been turned) onto his good side. The nausea of the Klingon drug was gone, but it was obviously still working, because his entire right side radiating tendrils of pain too intense for him to withstand – yet he withstood it.

Trying not to groan he took stock. The wound in his shoulder throbbed evilly. Blood had saturated his shirt and cooled on his skin. He remembered the lacerations to his left hand, blood encrusted and stiff, the moment he moved his fingers. Though still free, that hand would be even more useless now. His head was pounding and when he gingerly touched the left side of his face it felt swollen and tender. There was also a broken tooth somewhere...

_Ouch._

Was he alone in the room? There were no sounds, no one in view. Maybe he could crawl-

A boot landed right in front of his face.

"Finally. You humans _are_ weaklings," said the Commander.

_Which idiot sent me to this planet anyway? _

"Themak is it? Of the house of Antaak!" Kirk declared pompously to the boot. "Yes, help me up, will you – oh, _OW_!"

_Hurts!_

His legs could hardly support him but he willed his body to stand to take the pressure off the harness.

"Hey, thanks," he said, a bit weakly, to the Klingon's chest. He would have rested his forehead against that chest.

_Pretend it's a tree. A golden tree._

But no, that would be going too far.

"I have to admit," said Themak, "that you do not disappoint in your attitude, Captain. Your arrogance in the face of grotesque pain—it is admirable."

"Grotesque pain?" Kirk said to the chest. "Oh, _that_. Pah! All in the line of duty, Commander."

He realized he was a bit manic, but it really seemed the only way at the moment to not lose his mind to the staggering pain. He looked up at the towering Klingon and grinned widely.

Themak's smile in return was delightful.

"Can you sit, Captain?" he asked politely.

Kirk looked over at stool.

_Not that again._

"Why not?"

The Commander helped him walk over, slowly and carefully, leaning a bit. When they reached the stool he helped him to sit down. It was all very friendly. The Captain was glad to be off his feet, but his bloody hand slipped on the seat, and he had to hold himself precariously crooked to accommodate the excruciating pain in his shoulder and arm.

_Chest and back too. Not to forget my neck._

He dared not think about what all was broken and torn.

_Poor Bones._

"Shall we continue, then, Captain?"

Themak had already turned toward the table.

Kirk sighed.

"You know, Commander, I'd really rather not. It's tedious and a waste of your time."

"Oh, but I do enjoy it, Captain, and I'm not busy."

The Commander stood smiling down at the tools spread out in front of him, making a show of selecting.

"Ah, I think you'll need this." He turned, holding up a gag. "Don't want you biting your tongue. You _will_ talk, you know."

It took mere seconds to brutally force the gag into Kirk's mouth and secure it with a string around his head. The worst thing, when Themak stood back to admire his handiwork, was that Kirk couldn't simply pull it off, because he needed to hold on to the seat. And though he was entirely unrestrained, he couldn't simply get up. Kirk knew he'd instantly collapse.

Themak knew it too, smiled evilly, and even turned his back to him.

_I hate you so much_, Kirk thought at that back.

"Ah, here's the one I'm looking for," the Commander crooned.

Kirk's already strained breathing instantly became more shallow when he saw the thin, _thin_ lancet.

It was sobering, like a bucket of ice water.

_Damn, I've made a mess of things. It was _my_ carelessness that put all of us in the Klingons' clutches. _

The Commander was saying something.

Kirk shook his head. Had he just fainted? Blood was roaring in his ears.

"Eh?" he said rudely. It was all the gag allowed him to utter.

"I _said—_"

Kirk nearly suffered a heart attack when the door flew open and a soldier stormed in.

"_Don't interrupt!_" Themak thundered.

"Commander," cringed the soldier, whom Kirk recognized as the Brigadier from the square. He stood dithering in the door opening, looking from his boss to the prisoner.

Kirk felt rather silly teetering on the chair like that, seemingly just _waiting_ for his punishment.

_Is the man ever going to talk?_

"What then!" Themak yelled.

"There has been an explosion at the depot near the outpost, Sir. It was bombed, Sir!"

Themak stood for a moment, struck dumb.

_Spock. Sturgeon. _

Kirk smiled around his gag.

The Commander turned toward him.

"Who are they, Kirk!" he bellowed.

He grasped the harness and lifted Kirk clean off the chair. Now the gag came in real handy as the lancet

came down, a shining downward arc—

The ground shook to a deafening explosion, very close by. Kirk, whose feet weren't even touching the floor, felt it through Themak's arm. A loud yelling started up in the corridor.

Themak thrust Kirk back onto the stool and dropped the lancet on the corner of the table.

"Take him to the cells!"

He stormed from the room.

The Brigadier caught Kirk in mid-fall and started to drag him away.

_Oops, clumsy!_

Kirk stumbled and fell heavily into the corner of the table.

_Y-ouch, better grab it by the handle this time!_


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

Bekk Grak cursed the heavens for rounding the corner just as the Brigadier emerged with the bloodied Jura.

"You! And you! Take this prisoner to the dungeon, and don't put him in the same cell as the others!"

_What others? _Grak wondered with spite. They had had to take no prisoners on this dumb planet. He had expected to prove himself in his first battle, but there had been no battle, not even a skirmish. He had been sent, shamefully, to the lowliest of places in the universe, a place where people _didn't fight_.

And now that there was finally some action, Bekk Grak had to babysit this filthy Jura.

The man was barely conscious, a real mess. Gark shuddered involuntarily at the sight of the harnessed arm, the hand tied to the back turning a sickly blue. He had heard of Commander Themak's interrogation methods.

But what could this creature have had to tell? Probably the Commander had just gotten bored and plucked the unfortunate victim from the street for some entertainment.

"You gonna help me or what?" barked the Sergeant.

He had already taken the man's free left arm, which was relatively unharmed except for the bloodied hand half hidden in the torn sleeve. The Jura was unable to hold himself up and was just hanging there, groaning a little.

Grak shrugged and approached. The right arm was bent back in so many abnormal ways it made him cringe.

"Hey, you squeamish?" the Sergeant mocked.

Grak roughly grabbed the harness where it was tied to the elbow and yanked the prisoner up.

The effect was immediate. The Jura cried out and quickly scrambled to his feet.

_Pathetic_, Grak thought as they started moving down the chaotic corridor.

Warriors were moving all over the place, yelling instructions. Orders were being relayed over the speakers that were rigged all over this crumbling dump of a castle. He had heard that Commander Themak had a penchant for the medieval, but why couldn't they have set up a prefab barracks? The corridor narrowed and they had to stand aside to let a column through. When they had passed by Gark picked up the pace. He wanted to get back to his assignment and see the crater, smell the smoke, savor the air of war.

00000000000

Kirk wished they had removed the gag. It was interfering with his hurried breathing. His whole side was a mass of searing pain and it was damn close to overwhelming him. He blacked out, for just a few seconds, then was jolted out of it by the panicked awareness of the knife slipping from his fingers and the need to gain his footing again, to somewhat, _somewhat_ take the pressure off his shoulder.

He tried hard to concentrate on getting his bearings. Judging from the view out the tall, narrow windows - he glimpsed a plume of black smoke at some point - he figured he was in the tower of the Citadel, the highest building in the vicinity. He and his team had made it a point not to come here, before the invasion – the risk of interference was too high. And when they had brought him here from the square he had been unconscious. He needed to memorize the place, but his befuddled mind was having trouble registering anything beyond that they were descending though chaos. Klingons of all ranks were stampeding past them. When they reached stone steps spiraling so tightly they almost turned in on themselves, he bit the gag with the effort to stay on his feet and away from the warriors jostling them.

They reached the bottom of the stairs, traversed a crowded hall – he didn't have the strength to lift his head, but it felt and sounded high-arched – then went through a studded wooden door and through a succession of smaller rooms, each one quieter than the previous one.

He was quickly losing it. His guards were rough and clumsy with him, and now the knife wound in his shoulder was bleeding profusely. He would faint again soon and then he'd drop the lancet, his only weapon. He willed his stiff fingers to clutch it tighter, caring less and less for the blade held flat against the artery in his wrist.

Then he heard the Klingon to his left say:

"He's human, you know?"

"Oh yeah?" said the Klingon to his right. "Looks Jura to me!"

"You think a Jura would hold out that long against the Commander?" the other mocked.

"No-"

"Well, he and a bunch of others were apprehended on the square. Themak did _that_ to him, right in front of all those Juras, and the only ones to react were the other humans. That's how he got them, see? Clever."

"Hah! Human spies!"

"_Federation_ spies, you stupid Bekk! Don't you know anything? This is Kirk. _Captain _Kirk!"

The Klingon to his right stopped dead.

00000000000

Grak stopped in his tracks, which made the human cry out.

_Kirk._

A burning hatred swelled in his chest and he yanked the prisoner's head up by the hair to study his face.

"What's it to you?" the Sergeant demanded. "Keep moving!"

Grak ignored him. This was Kirk, alright, behind the bruises, the sweat and the gag, the light brown eyes, swimming with insane pain.

"You killed my father in the battle for Elan!" Grak spat at him.

There, he saw it, in the eyes that flickered to recognition: his guilt.

Grak raised his hand to strike a fatal blow.

His fist was intercepted by the Sergeant.

"Fool! You kill him and Themak will have your hide. What he did to Kirk will pale in comparison to what he'd do to you!"

_And _you_, no doubt_, Grak thought spitefully. But he relented, for now. He'd kill Kirk, when they were alone. But first, what Themak would do to Grak was going to pale in comparison to what Grak was going to do to Kirk!

"Let's move, Bekk!" the Sergeant ordered, and they stepped through the door into the dungeon.

00000000000

He was having difficulty processing what had just happened.

Elan?

That was like a different lifetime.

He swallowed when he realized the other Klingon had saved his life. It could have been over right then and there. It was small consolation. The drop in temperature as they stepped into the new room wracked his body with shivers, but then he remembered that this was where McCoy would be. Spock too? He couldn't remember. Impatient to see them he lifted his head to look around, just a little because he didn't want to draw more attention to himself.

The dungeon was a long cavern-like hall with a well-lit center aisle and a series of dark alcoves off to either side. Most of them, he saw as they passed by, were packed with barrels and crates, until-

"JIM!"

_Bones_.

They seemed unharmed. Their alcove had no bars, so there must be a force field. McCoy instantly proved it, reaching out to him and getting his hands painfully zapped.

His guards unceremoniously dropped him on his belly in front of them. The floor was darn cold and his body went into an uncontrolled shiver.

"Jim, you're going into shock," said McCoy, barely controlling his misery. He was on his knees, as close to the force field as he dared. He was barely five feet away. It could have been five light years, it made no difference.

Kirk wanted to give the Doctor some sign, so he blinked. He cursed the gag. He'd get rid of it when the guards left, if they didn't tie up his free hand, or find the lancet first. Then he'd be able to communicate with them. And he'd also breathe more easily, get more oxygen to keep from passing out. It would have to be fast, though. He felt like he was slipping into freezing cold water.

"Dammit! There's no other force field!" he heard one of his guards say - the other one, not the mad one.

"Put 'em in here, Serge. I'll guard him."

Kirk saw the cold, calculating hatred in that voice register on McCoy's face. He closed his eyes for a second to collect himself. A fine frying pan into the fire situation if there ever was one. On the other hand, he stood no chance if there were two of them. And if they locked him up, the delicate lancet would be useless. If only he could keep his head now. He opened his eyes again, drew strength from McCoy's presence, and waited.

"Alri-ight," said the other one knowingly.

They dragged him across the flagstones into the alcove across from the other humans and dropped him face-down onto the filthy floor.

He didn't know how much more of this he could take. He could hardly keep his eyes open, staring blankly at the boot tips in front of his nose, listening to the receding footsteps. In the distance, the door slammed shut.

"Alone at last, Captain Kirk," said the voice above him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

_Time to go..._

His body was betraying him. He had perhaps a few minutes left before he blacked out, no matter how often this Klingon slapped him in the face to get his attention. He could hardly feel a thing anymore. All that was left were the bone weary shivers. Mercifully even those were abating too. It would be easy to slide away. So easy...

When the big hand was ready to start its downward arc toward his face again, he swung with all he had left, plunging the lancet deep into the Klingon's neck, right underneath the ear.

_You've got my attention now._

The Klingon's eyes widened in surprise.

Unsure of Klingon circulatory anatomy, Kirk yanked the lancet down. It sliced cleanly. Hot, ghastly pink blood gushed, running down his arm, saturating his torn, already bloody sleeve and shirt.

The Klingon's hand, destined a second ago for his battered face, instead flew to Kirk's hand and, crushing it, pulled it away, lancet and all. The knife slipped from Kirk's fingers and fell somewhere. Kirk didn't have time to feel for it. The Klingon was opening his mouth and Kirk slapped his hand over that dreadful, blood-spilling opening, afraid it was going to cry out. Instead he felt the last desperate suck of air. It mixed, gurgling, with the blood, and the light went out of the wide-open eyes.

Kirk grabbed the chin and pushed the Klingon off of him. The body fell sideways and thudded into the dirty straw. It jerked twice, soundlessly, then lay still.

_Lucky bastard,_ Kirk thought, his annoyance growing at his men for calling to him – not too loud for fear of attracting attention, but insistent.

_They sure are insistent. _

He bit down on his gag and thought for a moment to find the lancet to cut it free, so he could tell them to be quiet and let him go to sleep. But no, duty called. He rolled onto his good side, got onto his knees and left hand, then did a cripple-crawl to a nearby crate. Groaning with the effort, he raised himself to his feet, slipping in the growing pool of blood. Steadying himself against the wall he stumbled to the arched opening of the alcove.

"Jim, you can make it!"

"Captain! The force field! The button to deactivate it is to the left!"

Kirk only vaguely registered these words. A button. They were saying something about a button.

00000000000

Jim Kirk was monstrous, walking like a dead man across the aisle. He drew gasps from his people, of pity and horror. He dragged his feet, leaning sideways and back into his deformed shoulder. The imbalance enforced the impression that part of his body had been cut away, that it was impossible that he was moving, alive. He was slick with blood. It glued his shirt to his chest, dripped down his dangling left arm, his boots too left bloody tracks. Blood streamed down his face, making his teeth clamped on the gag extra white inside the swollen grimace of pain.

And his eyes. His eyes, though unseeing, were _on fire._

"Jim, veer _left_!" McCoy cried out.

Kirk obeyed like an automaton. Had he not, he would have walked straight into the force field.

He was very close now and McCoy could see the light in his eyes going. He stumbled and reached out with his bloody hand to steady himself against the arch.

His hand was resting right above the button, but he didn't seem to know what to do.

"Push the button, Jim. It's right there, under your hand. It's right there," McCoy pleaded.

A spark. The trembling, bloody arm moved.

They were free.

McCoy caught the Captain as he fell. He gently lowered the lifeless body to the floor and cradled it in his arms.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" McCoy hissed at the others, "get him a way out of here!"

They all scurried, except for Carol Shafer.

"He's going into deep shock," McCoy told her. "He needs blankets, and something to clean off some of this blood, I can't see if it's his and where it's coming from!"

Kirk's pulse was too fast and thready, his breathing shallow and, alarmingly, slowing. His skin was clammy and his limbs were wracked with minute shivers.

Shafer returned, her arms full of fabric, but the first thing she handed McCoy was the lancet. The Doctor cut the string holding the gag in place. Together they carefully pried it from between the Captain's teeth.

"Don't you want to cut the harness?" she asked. Her voice trembled.

"No, it would just do more damage. For now it immobilizes the arm. But help me with the shirt."

Shafer peeled the drenched shirt off Kirk's chest and McCoy cut a gap at the shoulder. Then he handed the lancet to Shafer to shred the fabric she had found. It seemed relatively clean and while Shafer tenderly wiped the sticky blood off Kirk's face, McCoy briefly examined the shoulder wound. He was glad Kirk was unconscious, because the only way to stem the blood was by plugging the wound with a ball of the cloth.

In the meantime Holt and Esner had been running up and down the length of the aisle, diving into the alcoves in search of an exit. Now they jogged back to the Doctor.

"The only way out is the way we came," Holt said, breathless.

McCoy was about to curse when he stopped. "Do you hear that?"

There was a grating sound, then the obvious opening of a hole to the noise right outside the building.

Holt and Esner looked at each other, then bolted toward the sound, ready to hold off whoever was coming in. McCoy held the deathly pale Kirk as close as he dared. They'd have to go over his own dead body to get to him this time.

The two men stopped four alcoves down. Their faces lit up.

"Mister Spock!"


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

Spock had steeled himself to what he might find, but the sight of Jim Kirk lying so helplessly in McCoy's arms shocked him deeply. Then he realized that all that blood could not be the Captain's. The latter was obviously still alive, though unconscious and a deathly pale.

"Oh Spock," McCoy lamented, "there's nothing I can do. We can't even mo- _Spock_!" he cried out and quickly took the proffered hypo, programmed it, and injected Kirk.

Spock set the medical kit down next to the Doctor and turned toward the others.

"There is a horse cart waiting at the other end of the delivery chute. The straw bales on it make a concealed compartment large enough for the Captain, Doctor McCoy and Miss Shafer. I will accompany the driver. Mister Esner and Mister Holt will have to separately make their way to emergency rendez-vous Delta. We have friends waiting there. It is, for now, a safe place."

"Friends, Mister Spock?" said Esner. "You mean other than Sturgeon?"

"Yes. There is no time to explain. Doctor, can we move the Captain now?"

McCoy gave Kirk the last in a battery of injections.

"Yes, this bought him some time. But quickly!"

"Quickly is the only way, Doctor," said Spock. "We have only one more surprise for the Klingons and will have only a short window to take advantage of the chaos."

Right on cue, another explosion rocked the arches, and dust fell down from the cracks in the ceiling. The hubbub outside intensified.

"They have begun the second assault," Spock informed them. "We must move now."

They lifted Kirk's body up and carried him to the alcove that Spock had emerged from. There was a large metal chute leading up to a hatch in the outer wall, close against the ceiling, large enough for a human to fit through. Beyond the hatch was another chute that went up into the dark straw.

Spock and Esner pushed McCoy up the chute. The Doctor, once on the cart, reached down to pull in the Captain, and they were followed by Carol Shafer.

Spock then gave a shrill whistle, and someone, it wasn't clear who, disconnected the upper chute. The cart moved forward a few feet, and the person quickly plugged the hole in the straw with two bales. In the meantime Esner and Holt gave Spock a lift up through the hole. While the cart was still obscuring the gap in the building, Spock helped Esner and Holt out.

Satisfied that none of the Klingons running through the small courtyard had noticed, Spock gave Esner and Holt a few directions and the two humans moved off toward a small door. Luckily the Castle was thronged with many Jura, so the two blended in.

Spock heaved himself onto the wagon's seat. The driver, a Jura, shook the reigns and the two draft horses began to pull.

All went well at the first Castle gate, but at the second one the Klingon sentry stopped them.

"Halt! What is this?"

From his face, Spock could see the soldier wasn't particularly suspicious, and appropriately distracted by the chaos.

"The Brigadier told us to clear the courtyard and deliver the straw later," he intoned.

The soldier nodded and waved them on. They encountered no trouble after that. Spock was glad for the Klingons' ill-preparedness, but he knew very well that they were far from safety.

00000000000

Emergency rendez-vous Delta was a small hamlet called Burgis, a three-hour cart ride from the Castle. It was the place Spock had made for after escaping the square and after risking arrest to retrieve the Doctor's medkit from the inn. Here he had been joined by Sturgeon.

Before the invasion they had chosen the place because they had a Jura contact there, a blacksmith by the name of Kirgis. Kirgis was the one who had arranged for the straw transport and who had driven the wagon.

During their ride there had been no opportunity to explain what had happened. Spock had deemed it safer not to expose his real cargo, as they came upon a Klingon soldier once, and a whole battalion another time. They also met whole groups of confused, panicked Juras. Kirgis made it clear that they could as yet not be sure of which Jura was to be trusted. So the straw bales stayed in place and only a few whispered words were exchanged.

When they arrived at Kirgis' compound, Sturgeon, Holt and Esner were already there. Kirgis drove the cart into the courtyard and backed it up to the door of his small clay house. They closed the gates and threw off the straw bales.

As they carefully lifted Kirk out and carried him into the house, Spock finally had a chance to assess the Captain's state. What he saw alarmed him. The Captain was hot with fever, and McCoy had removed the shirt and the full extent of the damage to his torso and arm, still twisted behind his back, was painfully clear.

"Looks bad, I know," mumbled McCoy. "And I can't keep him sedated much longer. We need to take advantage of the fact that he's still deeply unconscious to set his shoulder, before the inflammation gets too bad. No, don't put him on the bed. Put him on the floor."

They gently laid the unconscious Kirk on his side on a blanket on the floor. McCoy asked for strips of clean fabric and pieces of wood for splints, directing them to cut them to size. He laid out his medkit, was ready. But he was suddenly hesitant.

"Doctor?" Spock asked.

"I'll have to do something similar to what that Klingon did to him in the square. I don't like this, Spock."

"But it's what needs to be done?"

"Yes," said McCoy.

He went down on his knees and checked Kirk's vitals one last time. They didn't seem to satisfy him, but he nodded anyway. Shafer unrolled a lancet from a piece of fabric and handed it to him. He cut the harness without further ado. Kirk's arm, freed, was even more grotesque, but the Doctor acted decisively. Though it was stiffened he bent it back toward the Captain's chest, rolled Kirk onto his back and, holding only the upper arm and avoiding the broken elbow, pulled it slowly, gently, and fit it back into the shoulder joint. Then he made quick work of splinting the elbow, the lower arm and the wrist, and immobilizing the entire arm against Kirk's chest.

When he sat back he looked around the room, as if seeing it for the first time. Sweat was dripping down his face.

"We can move him to the bed now," he said, sounding suddenly very tired. "Someone get me hot water and more clean fabric so I can wash all this blood off him!"

While the others lifted Kirk onto the bed, Spock helped McCoy to his feet.

"What is your prognosis, Doctor?"

McCoy shook his head, looking down at Kirk.

"The tissue is so inflamed I can't diagnose, let alone set any of the breaks. I may have done more damage by setting the shoulder - but that couldn't be helped. The main thing now is to keep the inflammation down and make sure the knife wound doesn't get infected, and to manage his pain levels, they're already off the charts." He snapped to the Vulcan, his gaze intense. "My medkit is basic, Spock. I'll run out of meds soon."

"We need the healer," Kirgis put in a bit too forcefully, startling McCoy. The Doctor hadn't had a chance yet to consider their host. "There is a healer in the next settlement. We must send for her!"

McCoy nodded, speechless, gazing at the crazed Jura, who immediately went off.

"So Spock," McCoy drawled as he pulled a chair to Kirk's bed and accepted a steaming wet cloth from Carol Shafer. "Explosions, escapes from prison, and a safe house. Care to tell me what's going on here?"


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

The blacksmith's bedroom was small and dark, with a low ceiling and a tiny window under the north eaves, and it had, it seemed to Spock, an aspect of comfort. It was also blessedly cool here, between the thick clay walls that kept out the heat swelling outside as the sun touched its noon point. A lazy light fell through the dusty window, illuminating the bed and person on it.

Shafer set the bowl of steaming water down on the table next to the bed.

"Thank you, Carol," said McCoy. "You go now and find a place where you can rest."

Shafer nodded, cast a glance at the Captain, and retreated.

McCoy bunched up the steaming cloth and gingerly wiped Kirk's brow and it seemed to Spock as if he was suddenly split into two. One, telling the story of the Jura revolt. The other, absorbing every detail of the scene before him – absorbing it just like the cloth absorbed the water and the blood.

"Well, Spock, get on with it!" McCoy grumbled.

"Yes. After I escaped from the square I took the back alleys to the Inn to retrieve your medkit. I did not leave the Inn unnoticed. As I was making my way, outside the city walls, I was approached by a Jura, by the name of Adok. He was quite... agitated, even by human standards. In fact, I at first mistook him for a human."

"Agitated, eh?" McCoy said distractedly.

He ran the cloth over the Captain's eyebrows and then, ever so lightly over the frail, closed eyelids, wiping away the crusted blood there. The long, moist lashes fluttered a little, a sign, Spock feared deeply, of pain.

_It hurts..._

Spock blinked. "Adok impressed upon me," he persevered, "that his people could no longer take the Klingon abuse, and he and a group had started to plot a rebellion."

McCoy nodded, concentrating on washing clean Kirk's cheeks, his chin. It seemed to Spock he was freeing the Captain from a dark hull. There was his friend

_- all light, all golden_ -

but terribly vulnerable, the swollen bruises on his face brought to the surface as well. The Doctor touched the delicate arcs of his lips, marred by a cut.

_So much suffering._

"I-I was skeptical, but as Adok laid out his plans I found they were well thought-out, and as he described his group – an age-old militia, which trains but has never been deployed - I realized it would be feasible to disrupt the Klingons' haphazard occupation."

With one hand the Doctor tenderly lifted the Captain's head,

_- a weight that fits the hand that cradles it -_

and with the other he soaked the cloth in the bowl to swirls of purple and red. He brought it to the Captain's forehead and squeezed, letting the water run. The pillow underneath turned red.

_His heartbeat stutters, his fever rises._

"I am sorry, ma'am," said the Doctor, startling Spock so much he jerked, but McCoy hadn't seen it, instead turned to the other corner of the room. Spock looked and found that all this time Kirgis' wife was standing in the corner of the room, looking at Kirk and McCoy with an intensely sad fascination.

"t' Is no fuss, good Sir," said the lady timidly. "I will bring a new pillow and new sheets when you're done. But I'll get more clean hot water now."

She hurried from the room, almost reluctantly, wringing her hands.

"Go on, Spock. Jeepers, am I gonna have to drag it out of you?"

"Yes, I mean, no," Spock said, clearing his throat."As I was saying, a rebellion. It was surprising to hear that the treatment of their Mayor, and the news of similar murders all over the continent, had alarmed them, but that it was the public torture of the Captain that pushed them over the edge. Apparently the news spread quickly and brought all the local militias to the table. I spoke with all of them through their communication system, very similar to the HAM radio from Earth's past, so primitive I doubt the Klingons are monitoring it. They were adamant that the priority was to free you and the Captain. Someone in the Castle must have been feeding them updates on the Captain's state, and it soon became clear we had to act fast."

Kirgis' wife returned. She put the bowl of clear water on the table and dunked in a fresh cloth.

_Her hands are shaking._

McCoy accepted it from her.

_So much feeling. Too much._

She stayed standing very close. Spock felt he should feel it to be too close and an imposition, but instead he wished her to stay. Her witnessing this – Jim Kirk's vulnerable skin behind the ears, and the neck and throat, very carefully, all washed clean – made it so much more real for him. It was like a communion, with Jim, who lay absolutely still, only the slight rising of his chest betraying any life behind the pallor.

"Spock?"

"Will he be alright, Doctor?" Spock asked bluntly, with an impatience that didn't seem his own.  
McCoy looked at him for the first time, a bit quizzically.

"We-ell, I don't know, Spock. If I had him in my Sickbay this moment he'd be just fine. But here... I doubt we can even move him. But go on with the story. I want to know if he's _safe_ here."

_No concern for himself. How these men love him._

Spock cleared his throat.

"They blew up the weapons depot, then the granery in the Castle, far enough away from the dungeon and from the Tower where the Captain was being interrogated. In the growing commotion we managed to maneuver the cart into place to retrieve you. The rest, you know."

"And now?"

"The Klingon troops are not experienced, their defenses as yet non-existent. Until they organize, the Jura militia, however inexperienced itself, will have some impact. Their main objective, where we are concerned, is to get the Captain to the shuttle and off the planet. Kirgis and Adok are working on that. For now, we are safe."

McCoy nodded slowly, thinking.

Kirk moaned, his legs started trashing.

_The pain!_

It was like an explosion in Spock's mind, a surge of pain and deep sadness. He felt too hot, like Kirk's fever had suddenly invaded him.

McCoy held Kirk down, reached for the hypo and injected him. The Captain went quiet again.

"That's the last dose of sedative I can give him."

The Doctor quickly but carefully continued rubbing the grime off the Captain's shoulders and chest, avoiding the knife wound and the straps and splints that kept the right arm in place.

Spock had not recovered. His alarm escalated with each gently wipe, each revelation of the livid colors and bulging bumps on Kirk's torso and shoulder. The arm was swelling up terribly. McCoy took the right hand. It had been a bluish white, the blood circulation cut off by the harness. Now it was a livid red, and swelling as well.

_- broken -_

Spock was glad the Doctor couldn't spare him a glance, for he was sure his distress was now plainly showing. He couldn't understand what was happening. He had seen the Captain injured before, under even more dire conditions. He had always been able to keep calm and rational. He berated himself, groping for control, but it was like whatever _was_ out of control was not even part of him.

Now the Doctor held the Captain's other hand and gingerly opened the blood-encrusted fingers. There were deep cuts, which he painstakingly cleaned. Then he bandaged the hand.

McCoy turned to the knife wound in the shoulder.

"I need to cauterize. I couldn't tend to it during that bumpy cart ride. He would be defenseless against an infection."

With the basic equipment in his medkit he very carefully removed the foul and bloody plug. The wound looked ragged and unclean, but it was no longer bleeding. McCoy picked up the small cauterizer that was part of the medkit.

"I'm sorry, Jim," he mumbled.

_No don't!_

It seemed to Spock that his heart was wrenched by sheer _compassion_, and it shocked him that he couldn't _do_ anything with it, that it was so helpless, so futile yet immensely powerful.

"There, it's done," said the Doctor, putting one of the few remaining clean bandages over the wound. "Spock? Are you okay?"

"Yes, Doctor," Spock managed to say in a voice taut with control. "I am merely tired. Have you slept?"

"Oh," McCoy sighed, sitting back on his chair, "I couldn't much, while they had Jim. I dozed a little."

"You should rest, Doctor. As soon as the Captain is comfortable."

The blacksmith's wife went to a cupboard and took out fresh sheets. Spock helped, as much as his trembling hands could

_- they tremble as much as hers do, only the Doctor's are sure and certain - _

stripping the bed under the patient, swapping the pillow. Kirk had started shivering. McCoy accepted a blanket from their hostess and tucked him in. Mrs. Kirgis left – fled? - the room.

That seemed to break the spell, and Spock was glad for it, because he was sure he couldn't have endured another second of it. He was now merely extremely confused. He needed to be alone and meditate.

"How long will he sleep, Doctor?"

"Another two hours, three if he's lucky. Then we'll need that healer's medicine. I hope it comes soon, I'll want to analyze it-"

"Until then, Doctor McCoy, I suggest you sleep as well. I will stay with the Captain and meditate. I will notice any change in his condition and will call for you."

McCoy nodded. He looked exhausted again, like he had before he had turned all his attention to his injured Captain. He stood, a bit stiffly.

"I'll go see if they have a place for me."

Finally alone, Spock breathed in deeply, as if he had been critically deprived of oxygen. Then he quietly moved to the chair where the Doctor had sat and, secure within earshot of Kirk's shallow but even breathing, he closed his eyes.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

Spock was in deep meditation when Jim Kirk stirred. It began as a small disturbance in his breathing and Spock was immediately aware of it. A moan. The Captain's eyes flew open to a blaze of hazel. He drew a breath like that of a drowning man.

"Captain, be calm, you are safe."

"Spo—!" Kirk's gaze locked onto his First's. The panic in his eyes stayed.

"Are you in pain, Captain?"

A hesitation.

"Some-yes. But" - another tremulous breath - "_tell_ me" - stubborn - "what—"

He couldn't spend more on words, had to breathe through the pain.

Spock turned to the doorway and called out.

"Mrs. Kirgis!"

"Noh!" Kirk reacted. He grabbed Spock's forearm with his bandaged left hand. It brought a wave of pain over him, but through gritted teeth: "Tell me!"

Spock was satisfied that the blacksmith's wife had appeared in the doorway and quickly left again.

"Everyone is safe, Jim, everyone else is unharmed. We are at Rendez-Vous Delta. The Juras helped us escape. They are trying to get us to the shuttle."

"And—_Kling_ons?"

"They are still in chaos. Their troops are inexperienced, undisciplined. Themak is proud, he has not called in reinforcements. We need to leave here before he does."

He was aware that the Doctor and Mrs. Kirgis had entered behind him.

Kirk was focusing hard on his words.

"Juras?"

"They are-_passionate_, Captain," said Spock, surprising himself.

A smile in all that hurt.

"Yes, Jim, you knew it all along. They are passionate and _com_passionate above all."

Kirk's smile disappeared and his grip on Spock's arm became a vise. He groaned, his eyes filled with anger, panic.

Perhaps it was the touch, but Spock could feel the immense suffering. It made his eyes open wide, his jaw clamp down, his breath stick in his throat.

_Again? Control it!_

"Spock," Kirk breathed, blind to his First's trouble, "get them to—shuttle, off this—the civilians! Leave me—come back—get them out now, you hear. I—order—"

His words became strangled, his eyes rolled up in his head, and his whole body went taut with pain. Spock gasped under the onslaught of it, and he couldn't contain it, because it _wasn't his. _

The Doctor pushed him out of the way, breaking the awful contact.

He quickly administered a shot and the Captain went limp.

"That healer had better come quick," McCoy said, reading the Captain's life signs, a mighty frown on his face.

"She may be in the fields, Sir," the blacksmith's wife said quietly. "My boy may be having trouble finding her."

Spock took advantage of the distraction to concentrate on regaining control of himself. What was _happening_ to him? Something in the air, the water he had drunk? An illness? An atmospheric effect? But he hadn't felt it before. His meditations hadn't been able to analyze it, for it was, whatever it was, simply as wholesome and indivisible as... He hadn't even found a simile, because logically everything was analyzable, anything consisted of parts. But this, _this_ wasn't logical. He only had a word for it, the word he had give the Captain: compassion. _Passion_.

The second time now it had stolen Spock's heart, had made him lose his mind. And all he could do was passively undergo it.

McCoy was saying something.

"Spock, for heaven's sake, what is wrong with you!"

"Nothing is wrong, Doctor. Please repeat."

"Can you take them to the shuttle?"

Spock frowned.

"Yes. It lies behind the Klingon cordon, but in country they haven't explored yet, so it is undetected. The cordon is also, for now, quite frayed. Adok has knowledge of the country. He can sneak us through. But can we take the Captain?"

"It's a two day walk, Spock, and through enemy lines? We can't move him, not in this state. But you heard what he said. Take the others to the shuttle. I'll stay here with him."

This now pushed Spock to the brink once more. The turmoil in him was about to sweep him away.

I_ want to stay. I _need_ to stay._

"Spock! He ordered you!"

"I am well aware of that, Doctor," Spock snapped.

McCoy was instantly on alert.

"Doctor," Spock insisted, willing those alarmed blue eyes to stop boring into him, "he said to take _all _of you."

"No, he said the civilians, Spock."

"Doctor," Spock retorted strongly – something about quarreling with McCoy's typically flawed approach was bringing him back to himself - "by that reasoning we should leave Officers Holt and Sturgeon here."

"Well that's obviously _not_ what he meant, is it, Spock!" McCoy shot back petulantly. "Listen, you don't want to leave him here by himself, do you?"

Spock frowned.

"Let me stay, Spock. These people will take care of us. And now is the moment. There's only one War Bird up there. Once Themak calls in reinforcements, you won't be able to get the shuttle away undetected."

A calm came over Spock.

_What he says is true. Illogical, somehow, but true. _It hurt him to say it, but he had no choice:

"We will leave when it gets dark."

"But Spock—" McCoy pleaded.

Spock cut him off:

"And _you_ will stay with him, Doctor. I will bring the others to safety, alert Starfleet. They may reconsider helping Jura. Regardless of their decision, I will return."


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

"Spock!" McCoy whispered with emphasis.

It was an hour since they had spoken. McCoy had spent it at the Captain's bed, fretting about the state of his drug arsenal (out of sedatives and anti-inflammatories, low on painkiller) and about the state of Mrs. Kirgis, of all people, who became so distraught he had eventually sent her out of the room.

Spock had spent it in the blacksmith's workshop, conversing with a large group of Juras. Boy, was it crowded in there! And a little threatening too, a little too close. McCoy didn't want to go in. He waved and got Spock's attention.

Spock excused himself and made his way to the doorway. McCoy took his forearm and pulled him into the courtyard.

"Getting pretty heated in there, Spock."

"Indeed, Doctor. It is most alarming," said Spock.

"Well, the boy's returned. The healer is coming in right behind him."

"And the Captain?"

"He's still out, and stable enough, but the healer and her medicines couldn't come too soon-What the blazes is going on in there?"

A shout, almost a wail, had just come from within. It was disconcerting to hear, coming from a Jura. Spock was perturbed and looked it too.

"When I told them of our plan to leave the Captain here, their—nervousness was visibly heightened. They became most adamant that we should bring him to the shuttle,willing to amass an army and suffer great losses. Indeed it is clear to me now that the entire resistance, _planetwide,_ is centered around Jim Kirk's escape. They are extraordinarily concerned about his well-being, but it has been difficult for me to understand their motivations."

"But you explained to them-"

"Yes, once I had impressed upon them that the Captain would not survive the trip, they became most helpful. However, this new nervousness of theirs is undermining their efficiency. Some of them panic, others break down with what I can only describe as grief. They are no longer the Juras of before the occupation."

"All because of Jim?"

"It _seems_ that way-" Spock guessed, but stopped at that.

"Well," said McCoy, "I've seen some of that in the sick room. _Grief_ is the word, Spock .Mrs. Kirgis almost can't control it. I have never seen such sympathy. It is like she is experiencing it for the first time and she is taken by surprise."

Spock nodded, thinking, but still he offered nothing.

"Well, how is the planning going?"

"We are mapping the Klingon movements. I must say that their communications are exceptional in this regard, and I have good hopes for breaking through to the shuttle."

"How long till you get back?"

"Our best option is a circuitous route through the mountains, which will take us tonight and half the day tomorrow, if no major obstacles present themselves. Then it will take another twenty-five hours to contact and rendez-vous with the _Enterprise_, which is the closest Federation contact. I will relay my report and recommendation for interference to Starfleet and return immediately, either with the _Enterprise _or the shuttle. Then it will depend on whether Themak has called in reinforcements and how much the Juras have shaken his defenses. And Starfleet's decision."

McCoy grunted at that.

The noise jumped a level inside.

"I must go back in and keep them on track."

"Wait! You can't grab the shuttle and come and get us now?"

Spock shook his head. "We would be detected immediately. Any subspace communications from the shuttle will also be picked up. But I know how to tap into their radio from the shuttle. We may still assume the radio is not being monitored."

"At least send someone back with the big medkit. Who knows how much these herbal medicines can do for Jim."

"I will do so, Doctor, but I really must go in now."

McCoy turned to find the Kirgis boy at his elbow. The kid was twelve or so, and quite eager to please.

"She is here, Doctor McCoy!" he said excitedly, rocking on his toes.

McCoy laid a hand on the boy's shoulder to calm him a bit and followed him to the room where Kirk lay under the shaky supervision of Mrs. Kirgis.

00000000000

McCoy was immediately on guard when he entered the room. A young woman in her thirties, dressed in a black robe, her hood slung back, and Mrs. Kirgis were engaged in a hushed but frantic conversation. When McCoy approached them they abruptly fell silent.

"You are the healer?"

The woman bowed her head, avoiding his eyes. McCoy could see fear in her face.

"What is wrong?"

The healer quickly brought her fist to her mouth to stifle a sob.

_My God, they're all falling to pieces!_

"She is-", Mrs Kirgis volunteered, fought for words, "not up to the task, Doctor."

"What task?"

"I cannot even _touch_ him!" the young woman wailed, gesturing dramatically toward the unconscious Jim Kirk.

McCoy suddenly felt very protective of the patient. He hurried to the bed, putting himself in between Kirk and these two deranged women.

"You are a _healer_-" he began, but could see he would not get through to her, she was too panicked. "Never mind, _I_ am his doctor. _I _take care of him."

"You don't understand," the young women whispered, but she broke off, her eyes large with fear.

"Listen. The boy said you brought herbs. Please bring them to me," McCoy said carefully.

The young woman nodded. Regaining her composure, she spread out a cloth on the floor in front of him, opened a large burlap bag and one by one brought out bundles of fresh and dried herbs, small jars with powders and little flasks of liquids, tremulously pronouncing their names as she offered them for inspection.

"Fresh Purple Saddie, to soothe pain. Darydee, powerful enemy of swelling and great healer. Bennyberry root powder, for cramps and spasms. Tincture of Slickroot, to drive away fever and thirst. Tincture of Stuckroot, to bring on fever. Shady bark, to soothe nerves and, if more is taken, to invite a deep sleep. Powder of the Skullcap mushroom, it stops bleeding and disinfects wounds. Salve of Caya Leaf, to draw out poisons through the skin."

She had many more. As she put each item on the cloth, McCoy scanned it with his tricorder, growing more amazed at the skill and generosity of this woman. She must have emptied her apothecary, and each and every salve and tincture was pure and potent.

"My dear," he said when her bag was emptied, "I don't know what you feel you must do for Jim Kirk, but believe me that with this you have saved his life. We don't know how to thank you!"

This now seemed to break through her shroud of fear and remorse, and she smiled timidly.

"What is you name?" McCoy asked.

"Alana," she said softly.

"Alana, I need you to prepare something for me, a poultice. Can you do that? You won't have to touch him."

The woman nodded.

McCoy decided that Alana would be the one to tell him what the hell was going on on this planet.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

When next Spock looked into the darkened sick room, the Doctor was trying to make Kirk drink. He was cradling the Captain's head in the crook of his elbow and forcing a cup to the parched lips.

"Come on, Jim, you can go back to sleep after you drink a little more," McCoy pleaded.

Kirk, half conscious, half delirious, moaned and tried to turn his head away, but McCoy held him and decisively poured the liquid into the half open mouth. Kirk sputtered and swallowed painfully. His breathing evened quickly and his eyes, looking inward on a world of fever and pain, closed.

McCoy gently extricated his arm from the unconscious patient.

Spock was undergoing the feeling he hated the most: helplessness. The Captain was burning up, that much was clear from his flushed, sweating face. The entire immobilized arm and the shoulder were plastered with poultices, but underneath the swaddling the livid colors of the bruises and the swelling were visible. His bare chest and stomach were glistening and the sheets, which he had kicked away, were drenched. His free hand had come up to push away the cup, but had fallen halfway through the motion, too weak.

"Doctor?"

"Oh, Spock. Yeah, still looks bad. He's drugged up to his eyeballs. But we turned the tide. Alana's plants are very potent, but since I don't have a chem lab here, I can't extract and purify the medicinal compounds. If I could I'd also be able to give them to him with the hypo. As it is, all we can do is give them to him whole, through the skin or orally, so we're slow working out the dosages and, as you saw, it's tough getting liquids into him. Alana!"

"Excuse me," said a young woman, trying to get past Spock. "_Ai_!"

She had touched the Vulcan's hand as she tried to get around him and pulled away as if burned, then backed away.

"Alana, are you okay?" McCoy asked, alarmed. "Spock?"

The young woman stood with her back pressed against the wooden paneling, as far away from Spock as possible. Where Spock was concerned, it wasn't far enough. He too stumbled away from her until he bumped against a heavy chair and fell down into it. Both were looking at each other in sheer shock.

"Spock!" McCoy hissed.

The Vulcan straightened his features but his hands remained clamped onto the chair's armrests.

"I am fine, Doctor," he said, hoarsely.

"Alana? Can you get some fresh sheets?"

The young healer nodded gratefully and fled from the room.

McCoy approached Spock.

"What is going on?"

"She is a touch telepath," Spock said, back in control of himself. "I have suspected it all along, but the feeling was too vague to draw any conclusions. Not so with her: when we touched I tapped into a fathomless well of hurt and grief."

"She said she can't touch Jim, and she hasn't. Mrs. Kirgis too is averse to touching him. You think she's telepathic too? All of them?"

"I don't know, Doctor," said Spock, and he sounded tired.

"When are you leaving?"

"In a few hours, when night falls. This hamlet is getting too crowded. Any more movement will alert the Klingons so we go under the cover of darkness."

"Then why don't you rest until then, Spock. You are exhausted."

"I do admit, Doctor, that since the Captain sustained his injuries at the hands of Themak, I have been beset by... emotions."

"_Emotions_?" McCoy asked, incredulous. "You mean—not your own. Obviously."

"Indeed, that seems to be the case," said Spock, and McCoy was taken aback by the bitterness. The Vulcan however recovered quickly. "It has been most fascinating, but draining."

McCoy frowned.

"Get rest. Jim's going to be fine. The inflammation's under control and those painkillers are incredibly effective. If he continues to improve I'll even managed to set some of the broken bones. Rest, Spock, then get the others out of here and send someone back with the medkit!"

"I will, Doctor," said Spock. He glanced once more at his Captain and left the room.

Alana had obviously waited till Spock left before coming in with the sheets. She helped as best as she could but was even more nervous about touching the Captain.

"Alana, when you touch him, do you feel his pain?" McCoy asked gently when they were done.

The woman nodded shyly.

"It is not permitted to touch if the sufferer is _undon" – _the universal translator took a moment, then rendered _undon_ as 'live' – "and then we, the healers, are called in. But Jim Kirk, he is _too_ _agape_!"Again the translator sputtered, then gave:_ '_beloved'.

_Beloved_?

Alana saw McCoy's frown of alarmed confusion and looked away in fright. The Doctor quickly put his hand on her arm and adopted a comforting smile, nodding as if he understood. She was already on the verge of fleeing, in her fear and shame, and he cautioned himself again not to push it. Alana was the only one who had given him information about what was happening, mentally, to these Juras.

"You have been of tremendous help, Alana. Will you keep on helping him? I may be able to set the bones in his wrist and elbow soon. We will need more tincture of that Shady bark, and then a mixed poultice of Darydee and Knitbone. Can you make those?"

Alana nodded and swiftly got herself out of the room.

McCoy sat down in the chair next to Kirk's bed and sighed. What a mess they had gotten themselves into. But it was obvious that his decision to stay with Kirk was the right one. If even their healer wouldn't - _couldn't _- touch Kirk...

00000000000

Spock returned when the daylight blinked out behind the window and the weak electrical lamps were lit. Behind him were the others. They said their goodbye, one by one, to the Doctor and the Captain. Kirk was still unconscious, but McCoy understood their desire to see him.

"Will he be alright, Doctor McCoy?" asked Carol Shafer.

"He's a fighter. You know that."

She smiled a bit sadly and McCoy followed here outside, leaving only Spock to say goodbye. The room had become too stifling and he was glad to leave it for a bit. Saying goodbye to his friends, not knowing what the future would bring, had also taken a toll.

Spock soon came out and stood by as the Doctor drew in the chill night air.

The humans stood a bit further up, along with their Jura guides, ready to leave. As McCoy was taking them in, he suddenly saw the others. A large body of Juras, men, women and children, pushing against the gate to the courtyard of the blacksmith's compound. He looked around, and became aware of murmurs and shuffling and fires being a lit beyond the walls, all around the compound.

One look at the faces of those behind the gate made his hair stand on end. They stood, waiting, but restless, like they were on the verge of storming the place, held back only by some sort of fear, or reverence.

"Who are they, Spock?" McCoy asked discreetly.

"They are coming in droves now, Doctor," Spock said quietly. "But they are not warriors seeking to join in against the Klingons. They are just people: laborers, farmers, merchants, and their families. I am worried that they will attract the Klingons' attention and have asked Adok to send them away. But he says it is not possible. These people may have become passionate killers – yes, I was with them on a foray, and the two Klingons we came across were efficiently butchered – but they are still tight-lipped."

McCoy spotted the Kirgis boy, who was always hanging around. He called him over.

"Who are they, Abedi?"

"Why, they are pilgrims, Doctor McCoy!" the boy piped up.

"Why have they come?" Spock asked.

McCoy suddenly realized. His apprehension escalated and he clasped a hand onto the boy's shoulder to quieten him, but it was too late.

"To see _him_," the boy sang, all strung-out, "to see Jim Kirk!"

His words woke the crowd. A collective moan rose from them.

McCoy looked at Spock, who had gone dreadfully pale.

"Thank you, Abedi," said the Doctor quickly, "you should go and get fresh water for me now."

The boy scampered off. The crowd quietened down. A wave of something had gone through it, and both Spock and McCoy, and the others in the courtyard had felt it.

McCoy drew Spock into the house.

"They think of Jim as _beloved_, Spock," he hissed.

"Yes, they do seem to be in a state of—religious fervor. Doctor. I had feared this. The Captain is not safe here. Either this crowd will draw the Klingons, or they will tear him to pieces. I can—_feel_ their hunger. He, and you, _must_ come with us."

"It is out of the question, Spock," McCoy countered. "It'll kill him. Two hours out there and he'll be dead, guaranteed."

"Then we must wait—" Spock began.

"No, Spock, _think_. You have to go and get the others off this planet and warn the Federation. When Jim turns the corner I'll take him."

Spock breathed out. "Yes. I had hoped to find you here when I get back. You may not even have time to wait till the medkit returns, Doctor."

"I know. Listen, I'll make it work, Spock. _You_ need to go. Get the others to safety and get help, then find us and get us out of here!"

Spock nodded in farewell, and left. McCoy watched them shove their way through the crowd, then the gates were closed upon them. It would be up to him now. He drew one more breath and went back in.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

"Jim?"

McCoy redirected his attention from the life signs on the tricorder to Kirk's face. The eyelids were fluttering, the lips twitched to a grimace. The Doctor dabbed Kirk's forehead with a sponge of cool water.

"Mmm."

"Okay, try to come out of it now."

"Mmm, feels good, Bones," murmured the Captain.

McCoy smiled to Kirk's opening eyes and his weak, mischievous smile.

"Welcome back, Jim. A lot of pain?"

Kirk hesitated for a moment, feeling around the growing edges of his newfound consciousness.

"Not much, not like-"

He sighed, closed his eyes for a moment.

"Don't go back to sleep, now. You need to be conscious for a while. I need to tell you what's going on and you need to drink. Here."

McCoy carefully lifted Kirk's head and propped an extra pillow behind it. The tricorder bleeped, but it couldn't be helped, and Kirk said nothing. Then he brought a cup of cool water to the Captain's mouth. Kirk drank deeply.

"How long?"he said, his voice and eyes clearer.

McCoy put the empty cup aside.

"About forty hours since we escaped from the Castle. Jim, don't—"

"Bones?!"

Kirk had reached for his right shoulder and arm and was feeling the bandages, alarm growing on his face.

"Let it be," McCoy said, taking the bandaged hand and returning it to Kirk's side. "You can't feel a thing there because these Jura herbs are darned good or, believe me, you'd still be writhing in pain."

"Is it bad?"

"I won't lie to you, it's a mess. I've not set all the broken bones, ligaments are torn, and there's a lot of nerve damage. I can only palliate until the shuttle's medkit with the regenerator gets here. You won't be up to any heroics until we get you to the_ Enterprise_, and once there we're looking at a couple of operations and a month or so of physical therapy."

"_Heroics_," Kirk scoffed. "Spock went?"

"Yes, they should be reaching the shuttle soon. He'll send a Jura back with the medkit."

"You should have gone with them. Those were my orders."

"You remember your orders, now, do you? Neither Spock nor I could make sense out of them. But you don't yet understand all that's going on here, Jim. Neither do we to be honest but it was very clear you wouldn't survive if we left you here alone."

McCoy summarized what had happened so far, keeping a careful eye on the Captain's attention. It didn't seem to be flagging, which was a good sign. Instead, as he got closer to the present, Kirk's active concern only grew.

"Spock realized they are touch telepaths, and Alana, the healer, told me that you are _live_, by which I gather that when a Jura touches you, they feel your pain. It seems healers are brought in in those cases, perhaps because they can touch 'live' people without suffering? But she _can't _touch you because you are too 'beloved'.O,_ I_ don't know what it means! But Spock seemed to think that the entire planet's uprising is for your benefit only. And outside these walls there are several hundred so-called _pilgrims_ who flocked here for you, Jim, and I don't like their crazy fever."

"I—" Kirk began. "I don't know what to say." He was bewildered and also very, very tired.

"I know you need to rest, but first we need to make a decision. I spoke with Adok. He is the only level-headed one here now. He agrees that we need to get you out of here, sooner better than later, before the Klingons come to investigate this crowd. We agreed to wait till the medkit arrives and as soon as it does I'll patch you up and we _leave_. He and Alana say there is a great healer, who can keep you safe. They are adamant that that's the only place to go, Jim, where you won't attract... followers."

Kirk smiled at Bones, a comforting, grateful smile. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open.

"I trust your judgment, Bones," he whispered. "Is that her?"

McCoy turned around to where Kirk was looking and was surprised to see Alana standing, absolutely still, in a dark corner of the room.

"Hello," Kirk said softly, smiling. Then his eyes closed and he fell asleep.

McCoy feared Alana would swoon, but she steadied and approached the bed until she stood a few feet away. In the light of the lantern McCoy could see her face was wet with tears.

"We must take him to the Witch," she whispered to McCoy. "There is no other way!"


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

Night would fall soon.

The last twenty-four hours had been extremely frustrating. They had evaded several small bands of Klingons haphazardly roaming the area and had encountered no more trouble until they hit a major road block at a mountain pass. The choice had been between attacking the Klingons and taking a detour. The Juras were all for the first option, as they had been for murdering every Klingon they saw now. Spock, with the help of his colleagues, had been able to hold them off, until they hit this point. The Klingon force was simply too large, they would be cut down. It was true that the detour would cost them another half a day of hard running, and that there were no guarantees that the next pass wasn't equally guarded. It was Spock, not the Juras, who weighed all these reasons. The Juras had give up all reason to their bloodthirst.

The two factions spent precious time squashing the Jura's violent inclinations and took the detour. The other pass had been unguarded, and finally they were drawing close to the shuttle.

Spock was in the lead, approaching the escarpment when a blast hit the Jura walking a little behind him, to his side. The man didn't even cry out, was just flung down onto his back, a gaping, smoking hole in his chest. Spock leaped to put a boulder between himself and what was obviously a Klingon weapon. The Juras had only crude propulsion weapons, used mainly for hunting. The militia he was traveling with carried those as well as knives and machetes. He and his Federation colleagues had only knives given them by their guides. They had left their phasers in the shuttle.

Staying low, Spock took a quick assessment of his thirteen remaining companions. They had all found cover, were all safe for the moment. He turned his head again, discerning footsteps on the face of the mountain. The Klingons were above them, at a considerable advantage. Listening carefully he began to formulate strategies when suddenly one of the Juras let out a hair-raising scream and rose up from behind his cover to hightail it straight up the hill, bellowing like a wild man.

He was shot down, but the Klingon who took the shot left himself wide open, probably out of surprise, and was taken down by a well-aimed Juran bullet. It was the beginning of a barrage of blasts, arrows and even knives being flung, and a hellish racket of hollering and screaming. Spock hunkered down, unable to grasp the logic of it. Surely the Juras understood they were, if not outnumbered, at least badly outgunned!

But they were _not_ thinking. All this way they had been in a mad hurry and this obstacle was simply unbearable to them. Their irrationality rendered them fearless. When the shooting eased up a little, four Juras sprang up at the same time, raving like berserkers. Three were mowed down, but so were two Klingons. The fourth made it very close to the Klingons' hide-out and was shot point blank, but not before he had hurled his knife at his assailant.

Then it became eerily still, the last explosions still echoing in the canyon.

Spock kept his head down and listened. Not one sound from above, not a pebble disturbed. He was about to signal to the others when yet another Jura leaped up and ran. Still no movement up there. Soon the other Juras were running up too, yelling. Spock frowned and waited a few more seconds, then got up too. The other Federation people followed his example, cursing.

"These people are crazy!" yelled Esner.

That such was the case became even more painfully clear in what was happening up ahead.

The first Jura had found a wounded Klingon and immediately laid into him with viciously kicks.

"Wait!" Spock called. The Klingon would have valuable information. But the other Juras reached and started in, yelling abuse at the curled-up Klingon. Then a machete was raised.

"Don't!" Shafer yelled.

The machete came down with a sickening crunch and squelch.

The sight stopped Spock cold in his tracks and he grabbed Holt, who was about to pass him, by the arm and held him back.

"Don't approach, Officer Holt," he warned. "They will kill you too if you do."

They backed away while the five Juras hacked away at the warrior. Carol Shafer looked away and she was not the only one to do so.

But Spock watched closely at what could only be described as a blood frenzy. It was worse than what he had witnessed earlier, when the Juras had ambushed the two Klingons. Much worse. Now there was no holding back. He observed and drew his conclusions.

000000000000

Spock turned and walked down the slope to join his people. They were sitting on rocks, waiting, talking softly. He sat down with them.

"Are we safe, Mister Spock?" asked Esner.

"I believe so. They seem to be... sating their hunger. Klingons may be along shortly – our attackers had time to communicate with them – but we are very close to the shuttle. Another twenty minutes, even less if we hurry." He looked up the slope. The sun was setting behind the slope, throwing the Juras into gruesome silhouettes. They were slowing down. "They will be done soon."

The others shook their heads, still in shock.

_I should not have left them,_ Spock thought. _Not with these mad people. Did the Doctor get him out? Will McCoy do what is necessary?_

"Tell me, any of you," he asked suddenly, "do you remember, when the Mayor was beheaded, what the Juras were doing?"

Spock himself had been too occupied with the Captain. They were several rows in to where Kirk had pushed through but has been held back by Spock's iron grip.

_There is nothing we can do, Jim._

_That's what I said to him, keeping my eyes on his face, the impossible helplessness there. Always he has to compromise, between what he knows is right and his duty, his orders, the safety of his crew. An innocent is slaughtered in front of him and I am the one holding him back. Yet he spares me. The anger petrifying the muscles in his arm under my hand is not for me. How does he survive this?_

Then the ax had fallen.

The others were reluctant to think back to that other violent crime.

"Well, they were doing what they always do-_did_," said Sturgeon. "They simply stood by, seemed not to care."

"How so?"

"They did nothing, said nothing," Sturgeon shrugged.

"They looked away, Mister Spock," said Shafer. "No one... dared look."

Spock nodded. That's what he had expected to hear. It confirmed his observation of the slaughter: they had looked _away_ when killing the Klingon. Some had even hacked blindly, their eyes closed tight.

A change up the slope caught his eye. The Juras were backing off, one by one. Spock's keen eyes picked out the Klingon in the greying daylight. The body was unrecognizable as a _body _anymore_._ The attackers now stood around it, looking down on it, catching their breaths, wiping the froth from their chins, their bloody hands on their pants. Then they turned, together, and came stumbling down.

Everyone in the Federation group immediately but slowly stood up, ready to defend themselves should the Juras turn on them, careful though not to provoke. But Spock had been right. The Juras were sated, exhausted. A gruesome sight, these men covered in dirt and blood, looking out through eyes dull, yet still glowing.

Spock was the first to break the terrible silence.

"We must move on, before more come. We are close. Kuhrain," he addressed one of the men, "I must speak with you. We'll take up the rear."

The group started moving, at a trot, leaving the bloodbath behind.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

"Why isn't the medkit here yet? They should have been back by now!"

McCoy was pacing in the blacksmith's main room, hissing because he didn't want to disturb Kirk, asleep in the bedroom.

Adok and Kirgis watched him dully from their seats at the table. A map was spread out on it.

"We can no longer delay," said Adok without any urgency.

"I—I don't know if he can be moved," McCoy stuttered. "What if the medkit arrives an hour after we leave?"

"Then it will be better than Jim Kirk having been killed half an hour before then," countered Adok.

"Doctor," said Alana from the doorway. "Adok is right. We can _feel_ it. They want to _eat_ him, Doctor. And if they do we will all of us be doomed forever."

McCoy felt like yelling.

_That is all you think f now? Of yourselves? What about Jim, he never asked for any of this!_

He allowed himself one groan of frustration. His anxiety grated upon his exhaustion. He was a Doctor, damnit, not a... starship captain.

"Okay," he said "but how do we get him out of here. The compound is surrounded."

They sat for a while, thinking – at least, that's what McCoy hoped the other two man were doing as well: there was no change in their expressions.

"Wait," he called out. "Alana, do you have a lot of Shady bark?"

"Yes. It is a very common plant."

"Can you make a lot of infusion? Make it strong. I think these good pilgrims must be hungry, seeing as most of them came without preparation or supplies."

Alana frowned.

"They _are _hungry—Ah!"

Her smile of understanding was a welcome sight to McCoy.

"We need to plan a feast," McCoy announced.

00000000000

The next time Kirk surfaced was when someone called to him, then tapping him gently on the cheek. At first he couldn't make out if it was his head or the room that was stifling, overcrowded. His vision swam weirdly, then an impression of many bodies broke through, evoking a nightmarish memory.

McCoy has warned him about the demented crowd outside. He had heard them, in is feverish dreams, pressing breath stuck in his throat, he started to struggle.

"It's okay, Jim," hushed McCoy, "you're safe. They're here to help, to get us out."

To calm his hammering heart, Kirk soaked up the sight of the Doctor's creased face, then studied the two other men. He noticed that they bore the familiar Jura expressions of passivity – no demented passion there.

"Okay, you're back?"

Kirk nodded.

"Then this is Adok," McCoy pointed to the barrel-chested, sun burnt man with large farmer's hands and a shock of black hair. "He is the leader of the rebellion, which now seems to have shifted entirely to getting you to safety, from both Klingons_ and_ Juras. The other one is Dago."

Dago was of a slighter built, with gray hair, paler too – a clerk, perhaps, or a trader.

Kirk acknowledged them with a slight nod. They didn't even nod back.

"They'll not touch you, Jim," McCoy went on, "but they're as... level-headed as they come."

"Any word from Spock?" he tried, his voice creaking.

McCoy lifted his head and brought a cup of water to his lips. He drank greedily.

"None, Jim. I'm sorry. But we have to leave now, without their word and without the shuttle's medkit. It can't be helped. How are you feeling?"

"Weird. Groggy."

"That's to be expected. I upped your dose of painkiller but lowered the sedative, since we need your help for what's coming. First, we need to move you. Can you do that?"

Kirk took stock for a moment. He felt only a dull pain in his shoulder and arm – or rather, he felt his shoulder and arm dully - but he hadn't made a move yet. He nodded with some hesitation.

"I think so. But what about the crowd?"

McCoy smiled.

"Taken care of thanks to Mrs. Kirgis' cooking and the healer Alana's sleeping potion. Adok and Dago will carry you out of the hamlet on the stretcher."

The two other men were picking up said stretcher, which was simply two wooden bars, a board across it. It did _not_ look inviting. McCoy cut off his protests.

"_No_, don't even think of walkingout of here, Jim. The stretcher it is. Kirgis is waiting in the woods a mile from here with the cart, which we can ditch for horses if we have to, and when you're up for it."

Kirk tried to work with McCoy to sit up. He felt stiff and weak at the same time, but the sharp spike in pain was manageable. It was the grogginess that troubled him the most. His vision rocked, his stomach lurched. He wanted to be on the stretcher already, or to lie back down.

"Where are we going again?" he groaned, managing to remain sitting up. The cold floorboards felt good against the bottoms of his bare feet. He placed his free elbow on his knee and rested his heavy head in his bandaged hand. The Doctor was holding on to his unharmed shoulder, possibly for fear that he'd keel over.

"I don't know, Jim," said McCoy quietly.

"What do you mean, you don't know?" Kirk protested, making the mistake of looking sideways at the Doctor. His head nearly spun off his neck, equally with the dizziness and with McCoy's admission. He had to put his face in his hand again and breathe through the faint.

McCoy waited a couple of seconds till he had recovered. Then he came very close to his ear. "We _can't_ stay here," he pleaded in an anxious whisper. "We _have _to leave. The only place they'll take us is to a... witch. In fact, they call her the Great Witch. Alana assures me this woman will be able to help you _and_ – it gets weirder – she'll also cure all the Juras of their... madness, 'deliver them from you,' is how she put it. I'll not let anything happen to you, Jim, but this-this seems to be our only recourse."

Kirk nodded, cautiously.

"I believe you, Bones, old friend," he whispered.

"Good," sighed McCoy, relieved. He too looked exhausted and Kirk felt for him.

"Listen," McCoy continued, "only Alana knows where it is. The location of the entrance to the Witch's place is a great secret, known only to healers. Alana will guide us to a spot close by and then she'll go ahead and ask for this witch's advice. The place where she'll leave us is about a day by cart and then another day's walk or slow horse-ride into the forest, with some stop overs along the way where we can hide so you can rest. It won't be easy, Jim. Under any other circumstances I'd not move you."

"Let's do it, then," Kirk sighed.

McCoy gently lifted Kirk's left arm over his shoulder and then slung his own arm around Kirk's waist.

"On three. One, two, _up_!"

000000000000

When McCoy stuck his head around the fence to the blacksmith's courtyard, his heart skipped a beat. The crowd was truly vast. The tents and campfires and piles of families, from pudgy babes to the creaking old, had swamped the hamlet and extended out into the fields and gardens. It was like looking at a massive beast, but at least it was asleep. All lay snoring, sprawled on the ground, any place they had found to make themselves comfortable an hour or so after having eaten the generous blacksmith's wife's delicious stew.

The task at hand was to pick their way through this mass of sleepers. Most of them were deeply unconscious, since they'd been hungry and had eaten a lot. But some might be roused if they weren't careful.

McCoy did a quick reconnaissance, confirming Adok's suggestions. Then he went back into the courtyard where Alana and the two Juras were waiting with the Captain.

"Now's as good a time as any," McCoy whispered to them.

He looked at Kirk, who was half conscious. Just sitting up and the move onto the stretcher had wiped him out.

"We're going, Jim. Just keep still."

Kirk nodded. McCoy didn't like the drugged look in his eyes, the same as when they had just brought him here. He would have to recalculate dosages. Kirk would have to be more aware, more mobile in the days to come, so pain management would be an issue. However, mobility would aggravate the wounds. McCoy was acutely aware that none of that had been resolved yet. The shoulder and arm were still a mass of torn muscle, splintered bone, tissue smoldering with inflammation.

They started moving. Alana had given him a weak electrical torch, with which he lead the way. She had an oil lamp and made up the rear. The campfires were dying out but provided enough extra lighting where it was needed, close to the ground.

McCoy picked out the best route through the sleepers, as best as he could see. They stepped over bodies, arms and legs flung out, sleeping dogs and all the debris that might make a noise if stepped on.

McCoy checked on Adok and Dago once in a while. They were strong and agile, but maneuvering the stretched was a challenge. The Captain made no sound and McCoy couldn't see his face, but he caught a glimpse of one white-knuckled, bandaged hand grasping the rim of the board, and once in a while a leg movement to counterbalance or to not slide off.

During the half hour it took them to cross the crowded terrain, McCoy had plenty of chance to study the Juras. Finally they seemed at rest. This man here, cradling his young son, both peaceful. This young woman, next to a sister or friend, deeply unconscious of what troubled them so deeply two hours ago. Slack, almost uncaring faces, showing no sign of that terrible longing and pain.

But it was only the Slippery Bark working. Soon enough they'd wake up, with what the Doctor presumed would be a hangover, and they'd feel it again, be wracked by it, this adoration and repulsion, this hunger for the poison that was Jim Kirk, the _undon_ one who was too _agApay _and would be the undoing of the Juran people.

There, he made it through. He turned to help Adok over the last unconscious body in their way, then nodded to Kirk to let him know they were through, and then helped Dago. Lastly he took Alana's hand and helped her step over the sleeper. She was trembling and McCoy knew that it would not be just her relief at having crossed this barrier. Alana, he knew, was pray to a war between her deep conviction that the Witch was the only one who could help them and her uncertainty of _whether_ _and how _she would do that. And, McCoy reminded himself, she was undergoing the same passions her people were. The strain on her had been terrible, and their ordeal might only just be beginning.

He looked at their expectant faces. He nodded, and they pushed on, unimpeded and faster now, to the rim of the forest.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

_When they hit an easy stretch on the moonlit forest path McCoy stepped back to let the stretcher through and quickly checked on Kirk. He was out cold on the stretcher, a folded blanket under his head, his body wrapped up tight in a blanket now that night had fallen and the cold came on quick. The Doctor let them pass with the patient and fell in pace with Alana. She was walking a bit dreamily, so McCoy spoke quietly, and as she seemed used to the Doctor's gentle presence, she seemed amenable to a conversation._

"_Alana, you know by now, don't you, that we don't understand what has happened, what is happening. I am trying hard to understand it but you will have to help me. I am trusting you, completely. Here I am, bringing my defenseless friend to this place, not knowing where it is, or what will be done. Please, help me understand."_

_The girl nodded, a bit sadly. _

"_I know, Doctor McCoy, and I am truly grateful for your trust, though I myself am not sure of what is to come – all I know is that it is the only way. But know that it these things are not spoken of. I do not even know if I have the words. Still, I will try. But how to begin?"_

The heavyset Jura, Kuhrain, fell in beside Spock. He was still breathless from the bloodshed, the blood on his hands still wet, glittering in the moonlight. But the man seemed to have forgotten the purpose of his step. Indeed, the Federation people were now leading the Juras, who were dead on their feet. "_Kuhrain_," Spock urged the Jura, deciding to get straight to the point. "Tell me about death on your planet."

This shook Kuhrain out of his stupor. "Death, Mister Spock?" he asked, surprised. "Why, it is the end of life."

"Yes, but is it the end of _everything_, for the one who is dead?"

"Noh, Mister Spock-" Kuhrain hesitated, frowning.

Spock hoped he wouldn't shut like a clam, as had happened on all other occasions when he had tried to interview any of them. He knew he had little time now to get to the bottom of things. The shuttle was a mere ten minutes away.

"His soul is taken up," said Kuhrain, somewhat reluctantly, but more out of confusion – that Spock should not know this – than a sense of secrecy.

"Taken up, where exactly?"

"Why, into the Spirit, the Spirit we all belong to."

Spock nodded.

"_I'll begin with all things. All things are in the Spirit, all life, all joy and hurt and happiness" - Alana laughed softly, joyfully - "_everything _is in the Spirit!"_

"_You mean to say, all experiences, all emotions, become part of a big... pool, shared by everyone, all Juras on the planet?"_

_Alana seemed skeptical. _

"_Like a-" McCoy sought for words she would understand - "like a herb is put in the solvent, and its medicine dissolves into the solution?"_

"_Yes. It is so!"_

_McCoy didn't say anything for a few seconds, trying to digest some of the implications. Then he asked:_

"_Do you feel _me_, Alana, in the Spirit?"_

"_O no, Doctor McCoy," Alana smiled, as if taking pity on him for being so ignorant. "You are an off-worlder."_

"_But Jim Kirk, he too is an off-worlder, and you have _him_ in your Spirit. Why?"_

"And what happens, Kurhain," asked Spock, "when one looks into the eyes of a dying man?"

Kuhrain took a step away from Spock and stopped in his tracks, looking at the Vulcan with shock.

"We do not speak of such things!"

"Kuhrain," Spock urged calmly, as if speaking to a child,"I need to know in order to help you."

Kuhrain frowned and thought. Then he nodded.

"You must not look into a dying person's eyes, Mister Spock! If you do, your soul is taken up _into_ the Spirit, but it becomes not _of_ the Spirit. It becomes _undon_: live! It is hardly bearable for the Spirit and everyone in the Spirit!"

"_It was because of the Shizen, the Mayor!" said Alana. "Jim Kirk looked into Shizen's eyes when he died. And so Jim Kirk's spirit too was taken up. As of that moment we felt his worries, his sympathies, his suffering but we feel all of it_ hard_, you see, like... like a _stone_ that each of us carries alone!"_

"_You mean to say, he is not dissolved in the Spirit? Not like a herb, but like a stone."_

"_Yes. That is it. That is what _undon_ means: we carry him but each of us alone. We cannot share, a little bit of it here,and a little bit there, and passing it on from many to many. It happens that someone looks into a dying person's eyes, by accident. Or, it is hard for a mother not to look into her dying child's eyes. But then we healers come. We take the _undon_ back out of the Spirit, by medicine and ritual."_

"That's what happened to the Captain?" Spock asked.

"Yes. It was disturbing, but we hoped the city healer would take him at the earliest opportunity and take him back out of the Spirit. I have never heard of an off-worlder being taken in, and then out. I am thinking it must have been very difficult. But we hoped..." Kuhrain trailed off.

"That is how you communicated so well, so fast," Spock wondered aloud.

"What he feels, we feel. He worried so much, and there was anger too, and pity. That was bad, but not too bad. But then the Klingon got him and he suffered so!" The Jura gasped with the horror, his blood-encrusted hands flew to his face.

"_But in some cases, it is not possible to take the _undon_ back out of the Spirit?" McCoy asked._

"_In some cases healers come too late. The _undon_ has been in the Spirit for too long. Then he becomes _agApay_."_

_Again the Universal Translator rendered it as 'beloved,' but McCoy now understood it more as 'obsession'. Still, he wanted to make sure._

"_It is like love, then?"_

"_Oh yes! Jim Kirk has given us a richness and life we do not often feel. We feel it is... something we lost, something we used to have, used to be, but have lost. Do you see?"_

_McCoy nodded to reassure her. "Yes, but if you love him, why take him out?"_

"_It is a love that hurts, because we are not used to it, and because he is so hurt, and because he is – do you know this? - _veryintense! _And_ _really_ _because what he feels is not _ours _to feel. It becomes—unbearable and, and soon our love of him will turn to hatred."_

"What would happen, Kuhrain, were Jim Kirk to die on this planet?"

The Jura, already shaken, shook himself as if throwing off a pall.

"We—it would undo us, Mister Spock. No more, please. No more," he begged, and as good as fled from Spock's side.

"_That's why you must take him to the Great Witch."_

"_Yes. I have never had to do it, nor has my teacher, but her teacher before her did, once. The moment the _undon_ passes through, a weight is lifted off all of us. I have felt that. Healers take _undons_ there from many, many miles away. Not often, but it happens many times in a generation."_

_McCoy looked at the stretcher with Kirk on it, a few paces ahead of them._

"_Alana, what happens if the agApay is not... dealt with?"_

"_We-" Alana halted, speechless. "We do not know. We cannot even imagine it. I think—I think you saw it, in the blacksmith's place. We lose our minds. We must hurry, because we are all - even Adok and Dago, losing our minds."_

Spock located the small box under the rock where they had left it, pushed the button and the shuttle uncloaked. Only a few city-dwelling Juras had ever seen such technology, and even those had never been curious, let alone adopted it. These country bumpkins, already unbalanced, gasped and recoiled, but Spock ignored them. He motioned for his people to enter immediately and start launch procedures.

What do about the medkit? Obviously, the Juras' condition was worsening by the hour. What state would the bloodthirsty Kuhrain be in when he reach Burgis?

It took him but a moment to decide. He asked Shafer to bring out the large medkit, then turned to Kurhain.

"Kuhrain, it is imperative that you return as fast as possible to Burgis with the medkit. If the Captain and Doctor McCoy are not there, try to find out where they are and bring the medkit to them."

Kuhrain nodded. He took the kit from Shafer.

Spock ended the leave-taking with a nod and entered the shuttle.

The sooner he brought these people to safety, the sooner he would be back to help the Captain and Doctor McCoy.

He glanced one last time at Kurhain before he hit the button that closed the hatch. Had he just sent his Captain a life-saver, or a murderer?


	17. Chapter 17

A/N: I added a couple of paragraphs to the end of the previous chapter.

**Chapter 17**

The cart was bumping along in an immense field of tall grasses, leaving tracks like waves on the surface of a sea. Whenever his attention wasn't on the sick man lying on the blankets, McCoy glanced over the wooden boards that made the cart's walls and stared. He swore he could see the curvature of the planet on the edges of this incredibly green ocean. But he wouldn't let the beauty of it blind him to the danger of their situation. As a shortcut to wherever they were going it had seemed worth the jolts, the occasional miring in a muddy rut, the absence of any shade in the blistering sun – though they had rigged a canopy to shade Kirk, at least. Still, McCoy was having increasing difficulty keeping his second thoughts at bay.

_If I had my druthers..._

_If you had your druthers you'd be sitting in Jim's quarters, raising a glass of Terran brandy..._

Another lurch and Kirk flinched and moaned in his sleep. McCoy didn't need his tricorder to tell him that the Captain's pain levels were climbing. Even unconscious, the man lay cramped and stiff on the blankets, his body guarding, in vain, against the cruel jolts to his system.

Then Kirk's breath shuddered, and his pale face flushed a deep red.

_Darn it! Not again._

The Doctor put his hand to Kirk's forehead and frowned. The skin under his palm was too hot, too dry. He felt the racing pulse in the temporal artery.

The tricorder confirmed his suspicions: 103.95 degrees, 68 beats per minute.

"Too fast, Jim," McCoy murmured to the unconscious man.

"We must refrain from giving him the Darydee, Doctor," Alana said.

She was sitting in the furthest corner of the cart, keeping her distance but closely observing the two men under the flapping canopy.

McCoy agreed. These fever spikes were almost certainly an adverse reaction to their mainstay, the compound in the Darydee leaf that kept the inflammation down. They certainly had used a lot of it, especially since setting out. Kirk was possibly also suffering withdrawal from the Shady Bark sedative, no matter how slowly and cautiously they were lowering the dosage.

The Doctor cursed again.

_If only we'd waited for the medkit._

_They'd have torn him to shreds._

They'd have to abandon the cart when they hit the rim of the forest. He couldn't spot it yet on the visual rim of the grass ocean, but they told him that if they kept going at this pace, they'd reach it at the end of the next day. Then Kirk would have to go on horseback. If Kirk kept sinking, not only would it be practically impossible to put the Captain on a horse, but it would certainly kill him.

_We should have stayed. We should have taken the road. We should've never- _

"Switch to Root flower? Or Purple strife?" he asked the young healer.

"Root flower," said Alana definitively. She was already digging in her bag. "It will also keep the fever down and help some with the pain. But I only have a mother tincture." She gave him a sad look. "He needs to drink anyway," she added.

She handed McCoy the small, brown glass bottle with the cloudy tincture and then the water flask, sweating beads of condensation. McCoy looked down at Kirk, hesitated. The man was in pain but at least he was unconscious. McCoy hated having to wake him up. Drinking was, however, the only way to get the medicine into his system.

_First into his digestive system – and the gods know he's not eaten anything of substance since Themak got his hands on him – then into that thready blood..._

The Doctor was spared the guilt of shaking his friend awake when a cartwheel struck, crested and then shifted down the rock hidden in the grasses with a bone-jarring crash. The pile of blankets Kirk was slumped on gave him little relief and, with a sharp gasp, Kirk's eyes flew open to brutal consciousness. His free, still bandaged hand flew to the board next to him and clamped on, the heels of his boots scraped against the wooden boards looking for purchase, as if he was falling.

McCoy's hands flew to hold him still and keep him from curling up on his side - to uncoil the Captain from that natural defensive posture was a challenge.

"It's okay, Jim, it's the cart jolting. We're safe."

_Safe. The word that always calms him down. How true is it, though?_

It took a few seconds before McCoy saw any conscious thought in the feverish man's bloodshot eyes.

"Bones?" Kirk moaned, and the questioning singsong made the hairs on McCoy's neck stand up. Then the flush on Kirk's face sank alarmingly fast to a bone-white pallor and all the tension went out of his body.

"Stay with me, Jim!"

But then the cart gave another lurch and Kirk's eyes opened again, alive with terrible awareness.

"Adok! Stop for a moment!" McCoy called through the gap in the canopy.

The man on the seat _Ho!_-ed and the cart came to a standstill.

00000000000

Conquering the pain that had yanked him into the too-bright world, he looked up at the man. He knew it was McCoy looking down at him, his head ringed with sunlight. The thing he wasn't certain of was his own face. It, or rather the sensation of it – the skin stretching hot on his cheekbones, the tension on his forehead, the exquisite sensation of his dry lips - seemed to be floating an inch or so above where it used to be from the point of view of his eyes. Like it was floating away from him.

When he said,

"Bones,"

even his voice was removed, the sound drifting off. It frightened him, this slow removal, and he welcomed the very sudden _sinking_ of everything, his heart too, which he recognized as, simply, a faint.

Then the contraption around him jolted him back into alignment.

Alignment meant pain, pulling taut every muscle in his body, tightening it, like a screw, as the wave rose in him. He barely heard McCoy yell something, barely felt the cart stop. He ground his teeth, held tight to McCoy's eagle eye, still light-headed from the faint, getting more so...

"You need to _breathe_, Jim."

_Sure-_

Just then the wave crested and his body allowed him enough relaxation to draw in some air.

"That's it. Keep on breathing, take it slow. You need to get your heartbeat down."

_The distant drumming rushed into his ears. So fast!_

He clamped down on his panic, concentrated on breathing, ignoring the pain, the returning wave, which was flatter now, less fast too.

"Good, that's it. Okay, Jim?" McCoy asked him after more than a few seconds.

_God, no-_

Another wave passed, merely lapping at his feet now. He allowed himself to explore the edges of the agony. Where before there had been numbness, now there was a searing, a throbbing, in his arm, shoulder, arm chest.

"Better," he whispered.

He knew it wouldn't fool the Doctor, not completely, and sure as hell wasn't fooling the tricorder, which was beeping away, but this was how it was between them. McCoy nodded, not concealing his concern.

"You're having trouble with the medication. It's leaves and roots, Jim, and we never got the medkit. You're also undernourished and dehydrated. Here, drink this. It's not gonna taste too good."

The Doctor helped him lift his head and put a small bottle to his lips. The first whiff of its contents made him involuntarily pull back.

"Lie still and drink the damn potion," McCoy mumbled, forcing the liquid in.

Kirk winced and swallowed, then gulped down the lukewarm water from the flask.

"Better now?"

"Yes, Mom. Feel weird."

"You're no longer tolerating the anti-inflammatory that was working so well for you, so we have to yank you off it. We're also taking you off the sedative. And you need to eat. But first, drink."

Kirk drank some more. He felt too dry, too hot. He dreaded when they would start moving again.

As if knowing his thoughts, a man looking in over the boards - Adok, was it? - and said:

"We need to get going. We're too conspicuous."

"Just one more minute, Adok, please," McCoy said.

The man nodded and disappeared.

"All going as planned otherwise?" Kirk asked the Doctor, getting each word out pretty evenly.

McCoy's smile was rueful enough.

"We lost Dago. He ran off while we were resting. We're taking this shortcut. It's essential that we get wherever we need to get soon. Alana and Adok are increasingly troubled."

"What can I do?" Kirk asked.

McCoy let out a bark of laughter, which was nice to hear.

"'What can I do,' the man says!" the Doctor grinned. "Well, turn the corner, Jim. Can you? Stay awake now to eat and drink and take some of this new medicine."

"I can do that, Doctor. First you'd better get us moving again. We're in a hurry, right?"


	18. Chapter 18

**I cleaned up chapter 17. In my haste to post it for you I let a lot of typos slip by. Will do my better best with this one. I also apologize for putting you through this long wait. The rest of the story is plotted out, but you know: life, etc. All I can do is my best and I hope you stick with it!**

**Chapter 18**

The Doctor was slowly shaking his head, smiling. Incredible. The man was doing it – turning the corner. Only James T. Kirk could be so headstrong.

With McCoy's support Kirk had sat up for over an hour, ate some, discovered he was very hungry, and ate some more. He also drank a lot of water and had more of the foul-tasting medicine, apologizing to Alana for any involuntary expressions of disgust. Made her laugh. Made small-talk for her sake, and for the Doctor's sake listened intently to his retelling of events. There were no more fever sparks and faints, and his heart rate was stronger. The pain had leveled off, aided by the merciful fact that the cart had hit no more rough patches. There was even a breeze now, setting the surrounding grasses to hissing and cooling them down. They came upon a narrow brook and the two horses drank greedily.

Still, McCoy fretted. He would have to remove the poultices still covering Kirk's right hand, arm and torso. The Darydee chemical compound in them was spent, but what little remained could still complicate the action of the Root Flower, their new go-to anti-inflammatory.

"Spit it out, Bones," Kirk said, looking up at him with a pitying smile on his pale face, streaked with sweat.

"I need to remove these, Jim, need to replace them with bandages. The splints..."

"Go ahead, Doctor, I feel strong enough. You gotta do what you gotta do, right?"

"Jim-" McCoy faltered.

Kirk's bandaged hand fell on the Doctor's arm.

"You did good. You made all the right calls. I trust you on this one too!"

McCoy sighed, surprised that those words should mean so much, should lift such a great weight off his shoulders.

"Okay," he grumbled, "but I'll have Adok stop the cart. It'll hurt enough as it is."

Kirk nodded and McCoy gave the order.

"I'm cutting the big cord that holds it all in place. You ready?"

Softly cradling the elbow, McCoy severed the leather thong that wrapped around Kirk's torso and his right arm in several places. Despite his caution, upon release there was a minute shifting and there must have been some rushing of blood as well, but the Captain didn't let on. Making sure the elbow was secure in a soft dip in the pile of blankets, McCoy quickly cut the thinner cord that secured the small hand splint.

"So Themak hasn't called in reinforcements?" Kirk asked, watching McCoy's swift hands deftly peeling off the large, fat leaves, revealing the fingers, then the hand. To McCoy it was a welcome sight, because that hand – all those little broken bones in there - had been much worse, so swollen, in fact, that the skin on each of the fingertips had split. But to Kirk it looked awful.

"Last Adok heard, before we made our getaway," McCoy said, trying to draw his attention, "they were still fighting insurgents in the capital and to the west. There were some troops out looking for us, but they were fragmented, scattered, the most inexperienced ones too out of an already inexperienced lot.

Gotta cut this cord now, Jim."

"Mm," Kirk said vaguely.

He made no sound when the Doctor freed the splint that immobilized the wrist and the forearm.

"Any pain?" McCoy asked, gingerly lifting the wrist, peeling off layer after layer of leaves, thankful that they came off easily and whole.

"Some throbbing," said Kirk, distracted. He was clearly riveted by the sight.

McCoy didn't know the full extent of Kirk's injuries, but it was clear that the radius was broken near the wrist. Even the considerable swelling couldn't conceal the noticeable off angle. The Doctor kept talking to give the Captain something to concentrate on.

"The Juras got many of them, vented their anger, their... obsession on them. I heard it got nasty. Hacked them to pieces. I'm sure the Klingons didn't know what hit them."

Kirk made no sound, but he was tensing up. McCoy knew that to him his arm must look like something unnatural, not at all part of his body. The skin was sickly, sodden with the moisture of the leaves, puckered with the imprints of the leaves' veins, stretched translucent and thin over the livid, swollen tissue underneath. When done, McCoy decided to splint and bandage the lot before moving on to the elbow.

"Spock?" Kirk asked, his voice strained.

"Well, assuming he left the planet when he estimated he would, he should be reaching the _Enterprise _pretty soon. Then he'll contact Starfleet and try to persuade them to intervene, but given that they wouldn't let us intervene first time 'round... There. You want to take a break before we move on?"

"No, we've no time to lose," Kirk said. "Proceed."

Cradling the elbow McCoy cut the tight cord that kept it and the upper arm immobile against the shoulder. This elicited a sharp intake of breath.

"Sorry, Jim."

"N-s-alright," Kirk got out, his voice tightly controlled.

McCoy lifted the elbow a little – it felt too hot, too soft - and worked fast. Kirk stopped looking, which was for the best.

"But you know Spock," McCoy said lightly, re-splinting the elbow. "He'll find a way to get back, with or without the _Enterprise_. You still with me?"

"Yeah," Kirk said quietly.

McCoy started peeling the leaves off the shoulder, even more carefully than before. He revealed the bandage he had placed over the knife wound. The wound had been the hearth of infection, only stemmed, not stopped, by the plug of shredded root that was an excellent combination of astringent, styptic and painkiller.

"Hold quiet now, Jim," he warned.

He peeled the bandage away. Kirk gave a strangled sound. The sachet underneath was saturated and needed replacing. The Captain would need a painkiller for this.

"Alana?"

When he didn't hear a response he looked up at the young woman and cried out in alarm,

"Alana!"

00000000000

"Commander Spock," said Admiral Faulk, "Starfleet absolutely forbids the _Enterprise_ to return to the planet until we have a better understanding of the situation."

"I understand, Admiral. Spock out."

Commander Scott and Lieutenant Uhura exchanged a look of confusion. That Spock would give in so fast...

Spock leaned forward and depressed the button. Faulk's image disappeared. The Vulcan immediately pressed another button.

"Mister Sulu, take usto the Juran system, warp five. Put us in position between the fourth planet and its moon."

"Aye, Sir!" came Sulu's voice.

"Mister Scott, you will have the con. Keep the _Enterprise _behind the planet. The energy field between it and the moon should conceal her from other Klingon vessels approaching. I will take the _Copernicus _to Jura."

"But, Sir," Uhura said, "the Admiral..."

"Admiral Faulk forbade us to return the _Enterprise _to the Jura planet. I am following his orders to the letter."

Spock was the first to leave the room. He needed the next couple of hours to meditate, to purge the Juran emotions from his mind. Some of them lingered, and because they pertained to his friend, James Kirk, they troubled him doubly.


	19. Chapter 19

**Speed writing. **

**Chapter 19**

It was all he could do to raise his head and watch her.

"Bones, what wrong with her," Kirk groaned, his attention diverted from his own physical pain by the obvious mental strain the young woman was undergoing.

"She's catatonic," McCoy snapped. On hands and knees, he was already moving toward her. "Alana, look at me!"

She sat, in her corner of the cart, frozen, but her small, sun-tanned hands, held out in a gesture of resistance, trembled minutely. Her face was a blanched white, her mouth open to grief, and her eyes, brimming with tears, stared grotesquely at Kirk.

The look in her eye made his blood run cold.

McCoy touched her shoulder and she gasped and jerked like he had set off an explosion in her. Then she scurried backwards, scrabbling on the boards, and drew herself out of the cart, never letting go of his Kirk's eyes. When her feet hit the ground, she turned to bolt-

"I need you!" he cried out, unable to hide his fear and his pain, in fact, giving full voice to it, raw and rasping.

She stopped in her tracks.

But that was all that he saw. His head fell back onto the blankets and, breathing hard, he stared straight up at the canopy, flapping in the breeze.

If she ran, they'd be lost, stranded here in this windy ocean, with nowhere to go. But he had seen something else in her eyes, another possibility. When McCoy had touched her out of her trance, she could have either run, or she could have attacked him. He had seen it, the blood frenzy, the hateful fascination with something so coveted it repels, something so loved it needs to be ripped apart.

_Him._  
He shivered.

But she had chosen to run. Had he opened a third possibility for her: stay, hold out?

That strange _nonalignment_ came over him again, robbing him of the strength to lift his head to see what she was choosing. Oh, this one was pushing him hot and hard and deep. He barely managed to stay conscious. Suddenly curious, he wondered why he was fighting oblivion so much. Why he would stay for _this. _

Because for the first time on this cursed planet he experienced regret. It was the emotion that wracked him the most. At the hands to Themak and the Klingons he had been humiliated, hurt, brought to the brink of death. He had felt fear in the face of the hundreds of crazed Jurans, their fingernails raking the outer walls of the blacksmith's compound. Now here was regret, the old companion, come knocking again for again he had made a mistake that cost the peace of mind, the lives of innocents. How often had he talked to his men about how risk was an acceptable part of their lives? At this moment, these words did not make sense to him. The entire population of this planet was suffering because of him. It was h_is_ responsibility. _He _had done this. How was that acceptable?

Watching the canopy, he let regret wash over him, let it take him away, wherever it may. He listened, over the rushing of blood in his ears, his pounding heart, to the silence in the whistling grasses. Attuned, he could feel the cart swaying gently in the warm wind, picking up. He in the cart was like the cart in the ocean and at the center of all of it was the wound in his shoulder, but for the foul-smelling plug open to the air, drawing peaked waves of pain from the undulations in the canopy, the waving grasses.

_Up_, down, _up_-

McCoy's concerned face appeared over him. This man too he had made old before his time. Over and over and-

"It's okay, Jim." McCoy spoke, touching him lightly on the cheek.

As he had done for Alana, the Doctor touched the Captain out of his nightmare. Kirk blinked. It was all he had strength for. He felt the cart shudder – she must be climbing back in. Each movement was a lance of pain through his throbbing arm and shoulder. Then he felt the sinking. How sweet it was...

"She's still here," McCoy said urgently.

He lifted Kirk's head a little and held a flask to his lips. He drank in the sweet, organic taste of oat straw. It slid down deep, cooling, and within a minute all the movement, the swaying and jarring and breathing of the wind, all the _up_ and downs, slowed and stopped.

He closed his eyes, just for a moment.

00000000000

Kirk's words had called her back. She had already left, in her mind, made the decision to run. Just like Dago, she had chosen to run from her obsession, to try to get away. McCoy wondered where Dago was now. He had run without a word, taking no provisions, not even water. He had fled blindly, chosen his own death over killing Jim Kirk.

He had seen the same choice in Alana's eyes. Had Kirk not called out to her, in that awful voice broken with pain and exhaustion, she would have run till her legs gave out, and perished.

The stiffness of her spine under her robe as she stopped clear in her tracks said enough. He was glad he didn't seen the struggle of decision on her face, in her haunted eyes. When she turned, the balance between will and despair had been heart wrenching.

McCoy turned and moved back to the Captain.

Kirk was staring up in the canopy, the pupils of his eyes veritably strobing in his trance of pain.

"It's okay, Jim."

He quickly, gently touched Kirk's cheek. It seemed to recall the Captain to the present, but that didn't make his condition any less alarming. Kirk was obviously undergoing another Darydee fever spark.

McCoy was about to moan with the helplessness when he felt something pushed into his hand. He looked at the small, unstoppered flask, then at Alana. She nodded.

"She is back, Jim," the Doctor said to Kirk, trying to hold his attention, to keep him from slipping into the faint that was coming on and from which he might never return. He held the flask to Kirk's lips, glad to catch the sweet smell, to see that Kirk was not resisting it.

_I don't know what this is!_

_I have to trust her now, after what it cost her._

The flask was empty. Kirk closed his eyes. McCoy gently let his head fall back onto the blankets and took his pulse. The thready, rapid heart beat was slowing, fast.

_It wasn't poison_, he told himself.

The heart beat leveled out, steady and strong. Kirk opened his eyes again.

"Jim? How are you feeling?"

"The pain-almost gone. Floaty," Kirk whispered.

"You must continue now, Doctor," Alana urged the Doctor. Her hand was on his arm. "It won't work for long and it will not be safe to use again."

He looked down at Kirk, who was amazingly aware, not drugged at all. Kirk nodded slightly for McCoy to go ahead.

The Doctor swiftly removed the plug, drenched the wound in another liquid proffered by the young healer, and dressed it, then finished the bandaging and splinting. Kirk remained conscious and undisturbed throughout.

When it was done, McCoy sat back with a sigh of relief. He thought he had never been so bone-tired in his life, but then again, that's what he always thought after pulling Jim Kirk from the maws of death. And it was always true.

"What was that, that we gave him?" he asked.

"We call it Selfheal. But... it is always the last resort. It can kill as well as heal. I am sorry, there was no other option."

McCoy knew that whenever he would would think back on Jura, it would be the place where he had let someone else – someone _not_ in their right mind - play Russian roulette with his Captain and best friend's life. Kirk no doubt would say that to play the odds was the nature of their occupation, you couldn't explore the universe without some measure of risk and danger, etc. etc. It wouldn't help, though. Jim could perhaps live like that, but not McCoy.

Then he realized they weren't safe yet. The game was not over.


	20. Chapter 20

**More speed writing. Took me an hour. Forgive the typos, I'll clean up these chapters when my muse takes a break. For now I want to get this out to you.**

**Chapter 20**

Kirk was the one who broke the silence.

"We should move on, Doc," he suggested mildly, tugging on McCoy's sleeve.

McCoy grumbled, then called to Adok, who got he cart going again.

Kirk was looking at Alana, who was looking back at him. McCoy saw a new hardness in her, a determination. All the shyness from before was gone.

"I thank you, Alana," Kirk said softly.

The young healer said nothing, just nodded once, slowly.

Despite her tight-lipped, almost defensive bearing, Kirk continued:

"May I ask what was happening to you? Did you – were you _feeling_ my pain?"

McCoy had formed some opinion on this. Unlike Kirk, he had had the opportunity to watch the Juras, the time to reflect and the benefit of the few morsels of information Alana had given him. But he refrained from speaking up. Alana was deliberately weighing Kirk's question. Perhaps she would be more forthcoming now, and confirm McCoy's speculations.

"No. Only if I touched you would I feel,physically feel your pain. But because you are _undon_, because you are _live_ in the Spirit, I _witnessed_ your pain. I feel for you as for a deeply beloved. We all do."

Kirk looked up at McCoy, frowning, then back to the healer.

"But," he said, "when you see another Jura suffering, do you not also feel for him?"

"I do. No-" she stopped herself, confused. Then said with a definite air of correction: "_We _do, we _together, _in the Spirit. But when I see you, I alone see you. I am alone with you. Each Jura is alone with you."

_It fits,_ McCoythought.

"Alana. You once told me that you love Jim Kirk because he has given_ you something, a richness and a life____, __that you had lost, something you used to have."_

_"Yes. This feeling."_

_"It is called sympathy – feeling with. It is very common to us, humans, though to some more than to others, and we feel it fully and each by ourselves too. It's not empathy, Jim, just... compassion."_

_"Compassion," Kirk sighed. "What _you feel for me, now."

The Doctor frowned. Kirk had seen it in his face, that he had noticed the new tension, however slight, in Kirk's posture. The sedative effect must be waning. McCoy straightened his face, knowing that the Captain hated to draw sympathy.

"Yes," he grumbled. Then to Alana he said: "We sometimes explain the traits of a people by speculating about their evolution – their development – over a very long time, sometimes millions of years. Please permit me to speculate like that. Could it be that, long ago, each Jura's touch telepathy - your touch _empathy - _became so strong that an other's pain, also his joy, and even just the mildest of emotions, threatened to overwhelm you? And that, to avert that, you – all of you, your entire species - developed this collective _Spirit_, where you could share it all. To off-worlders you came to seem uncaring, but you do care, only you do it collectively and it gets... diffused."

"Like the medicine in the solvent," Alana offered.

"Yes, exactly like that. You also found a way to absorb a person when he dies, his essence, perhaps, something, into that Spirit. But Jim, because he entered the Spirit in a way that is taboo, by looking into a dying person's eyes, cannot be shared, cannot be diffused."

"Like a stone."

"So two things are coinciding. One, through this Spirit, Jim is with allof you, with _every _Jura. And secondly, your compassion for him is experienced by each of you individuallyand unadulterated. It is driving you crazy because it goes against your evolution."

Alana remained silent, possibly because all this talk of evolution meant nothing to her. Then she nodded solemnly.

"You have wise words, Doctor McCoy, and they ring true."

McCoy looked down at Kirk's sweating face. The Captain's eyelids were fluttering.

"Another fever spike?" the Doctor asked urgently.

"Noh. No, just tired," Kirk said weakly.

"The pain?"

"Returning, but bearable. Just very, very tired."

"Good. Sleep then. Let the Root Flower do its work. We have a ways to go to the rim of the forest. You've eaten, you're hydrated, we got the Root flower into your system. You'll feel stronger when you wake up."

"Then we continue," Kirk sighed. He could barely keep his eyes open.

"Yes,"said McCoy to the man who was already asleep.

00000000000

They hit the edge of the forest some hours after darkness had fallen. Kirk had slept the whole time, and they didn't wake him. They were all exhausted, and the horses too were glad for a rest. Adok steered the cart as deep as into the trees as he could, but the forest was dense and the night was dark. He unharnessed the horses, brushed them down, then opened his bed roll and without ado climbed in and started snoring. Alana shared some biscuit with McCoy, but they refrained from building a fire to make tea. Having finished her food, Alana too laid her bedroll onto the soft forest floor.

"Goodnight, Doctor," he heard her say in the dark.

"Will you still be here tomorrow, Alana?"

"Yes," she said simply.

McCoy quietly climbed back into the cart and arranged his blankets next to Kirk. He believed Alana had turned the corner. But Adok...

He slipped back out of the cart and started collecting dry twigs, feeling for them on the pitch black ground. Luckily they were plentiful and he had an armful within a few minutes. He got back into the cart and made a low wall of the twigs at the entrance. If Adok were to get into the cart that way to get to Kirk, he'd make a lot of noise first. On the bench above them, he placed the tricorder. Any movement would set off its alarm.

Not quite content, but resigned to the fact that that was all he could do, McCoy unwrapped the lancet Kirk had smuggled out of Themak's torture room. He placed it within reach. Then he lay down, listened to his friend's soft breathing, and slept his Doctor's sleep.

**Gee. That's the best I can do to explain what is going on with the Juras. Is it making sense to you? And if not, is it the concept or the way coughmycough (okay, _their_) characters are revealing it?**


	21. Chapter 21

**I switched chapters 13-14-15 around and rewrote them some so now it makes more sense why they didn't take the injured Kirk to the shuttle and then couldn't wait for the medkit before moving him anyway. **

**Chapter 21**

_Muffled, mussed... mmm?_

"WHAT!"

McCoy shot up out of his dream, instantly forgetting it. A moment's discombobulation, then Jim Kirk's face, up close: healthy glow on his cheeks, bright eyes, an amused smile.

"Mornin'," the Captain said mildly.

"_Mornin' my_-" McCoy started, then held his tongue. He was stiff as a board and chilled throughout. Apparently his blanket had disappeared. So had Kirk's.

"When did you wake up?" he asked the smirking Captain.

"Oh, half an hour ago? Alana and Adok are finishing up packing the horses."

McCoy groaned a bit getting up on his knees. He caught Alana, a bit further up, packing her herb bag, trying to hide her smile at his grousing. Adok was strapping the bedrolls to one of the horses. What little had been in the cart, his blanket as well as his wall of twigs had been removed, without his noticing.

"I must've slept deeply," the Doctor mused.

"You must've needed it," said Kirk, handing him the tricorder.

McCoy couldn't argue with that. He strapped the tricorder over his shoulder.

Adok led the other horse to the entrance of the cart.

Kirk eyed the horse - well, "horse". These animals were earless and also lacked manes, though their tails were definitely horse-like. They were invariably black and a little broader than Earth horses. The manner of harnessing and saddling were similar enough. From what McCoy had observed, they were much less given to flightiness and moved in a fluid way. The Doctor admitted to himself he was optimistic about the coming ride.

"Are you ready for this?"

"I am," declared the Captain. "My legs will hold me, I think, till there anyway" - he nodded at the horse, just a few feet away - "and I won't have to mount."

McCoy helped him up and he did, indeed, stand, with the Doctor's support and a suppressed groan.

"Okay?"

"Well," Kirk got out, gingerly taking the first step, "it'd been a while. You'd think walking is like riding a bike," – he got into the saddle without trouble, held on to the pommel with his left hand, even smiled – "or riding a horse."

McCoy ignored the quip, stood for a moment at the edge of the cart, holding on to Kirk's shoulder.

"I'll be fine," Kirk reassured him. "I'll let you know if I'm about to fall off."

_Yeah, right_, McCoy thought to himself.

Adok led the horse away and without further ado started into the woods.

"Hey!" McCoy protested, but it was apparently the plan. The other horse followed the first automatically.

McCoy jumped off the cart and accepted a biscuit from Alana.

"Guess it's time to warm these old bones, then," he grumbled.

He took up the rear.

00000000000

McCoy walked beside Kirk's as much as the forest would allow him, checking on him often. He understood now why they deserted the cart. The forest was too dense to get through, some thickets too congested even for the horses. Alana had taken the lead. She seemed to have an eye for finding easier ways through. Luckily the lowest branches started quite a ways up the trunks, saving the Captain from having to duck too often.

But Kirk was born to sit in the saddle. His body just seemed to have that perfect center of gravity, the fluidity to move with whatever was moving underneath him. McCoy had seen him jump off and on a horse in gallop... saddled or barebacked, come to think of it. He'd also seen him ride slumped over a horse's neck, wounded. This ride was something in the middle of those. He sat a bit stiffly and unbalanced, low in the injured shoulder and turned in, protective of it. When they hit a patch with lots of ups and downs, his uninjured hand moved to his bad elbow, preferring to cradle it over holding on to the pommel.

McCoy wondered how long he would keep this up, but for now he seemed content enough, in a kind of concentrated trance, eyes on the top of the horse's head.

"Adok?" McCoy called, turning to the burly man leading the other horse, taking up the rear. "Can you walk with the Captain?"

Adok nodded and took McCoy's place. His horse needed no leader, it just followed its companion. McCoy caught up with Alana.

"Do you know where we're going?"

"I know the region, not the exact place. But my mentor said the Witch's place is not _one_ place. It has has many entrances. And it finds those who look for it."

McCoy raised an eyebrow and Alana, who had seen it, blushed with a mixture of embarrassment and annoyance.

"My mentor was a very wise healer, Doctor McCoy, and I would not have you mock her. She found the Witch both times in her life when she needed to."

McCoy held out his hands in conciliation.

"I apologize, Alana. And did your mentor also say anything about the Witch?"

"No, it is forbidden to reveal the Witch."

"Or what she actually _does_?"

"Yes. Also that."

McCoy felt his humor melt like snow under the sun. The helplessness of their situation threatened to overwhelm him again.

Alana scrutinized his face and added,

"She is a healer, Doctor. She heals not just the Jura Spirit, but also one who suffers. She will not harm your Captain."

McCoy blushed a little, that she had guessed his bitter suspicions about her people, that all they cared about was to get rid of Kirk, one way or another.

"How long before we get there?"

Alana smiled indulgently at him.

"Have faith, Doctor," she whispered.

00000000000

It was hard to tell by the position of the sun, obstructed by the dense canopy of the forest, how long they had traveled, but by his tricorder it was five hours before Kirk lost consciousness for a moment and nearly fell sideways off his horse. McCoy and Adok were there to steady him.

"I knew you'd never admit it," McCoy groused up at the groggy, mortified Captain. "We should stop and rest."

"No," said Adok bluntly.

"What, why?"

"There are others here," Adok announced.

McCoy spun around. He hadn't noticed anything but small animals and leaves rustling.

Alana, who had backtracked, confirmed it.

"Adok is right. They are looking for us. Juras, not Klingons. We must keep moving. You ride with Jim Kirk. Adok and I will ride the other horse. We'll go as fast as he can handle."

Adok helped McCoy mount into the saddle behind the Captain. McCoy embraced Kirk, who was slumping and grabbed the reigns.

"An hour or two, at the most. He won't be up for longer," McCoy told Alana.

"That should be sufficient to outrun them."

Luckily the horse needed no direction, as Kirk was an armful. McCoy had dosed him with painkiller and stimulant, a nasty combination if ever there was one.

0000000000000

**I wonder if this story will turn out to be a _L'arlesiana_? **

**In that opera, _The Woman from Arles_, the title character never appears.**


	22. Chapter 22

**Sorry, short chapter, But momentum.**

**Chapter 22**

They found the cave exactly where Alana said it would be. McCoy would have expressed his amazement at her sense of direction if only the situation hadn't been so miserable.

It had started raining just an hour after they mounted the horses. A thunderclap, a sudden darkness, then _wham. _The downpour was so copious it assaulted their ears. Even worse, the moment it hit the forest floor, flush with the stored heat of the long summer, the world had started steaming.

They were drenched in seconds. In minutes, visibility was reduced to a couple of meters. Then the Juran mosquitoes came. They were the size of a human thumb.

Kirk was rapidly becoming a dead weight in McCoy's arms. He didn't even react when one of the nasty insects landed on his exposed neck and sunk its proboscis into the skin, instantly drawing up a large welt. The insect bloated with Kirk's blood, right in front of McCoy's eyes, and there was nothing the Doctor could do, his hands were full.

_How did I lose control so quickly?_

"Alana!" he called out. Kirk didn't even flinch at the noise in his ear.

Alana leaped off her horse even before it had come to a halt. She ran over. Thick drops of rain pelted her upturned face.

"There is a cave," she yelled over the noise of rain and thunder, "where we can find shelter but half an hour away. Can he make it?"

McCoy nodded in sheer misery. The next half hour he spent contemplating helplessness, devising an entire philosophy of helplessness. When he thought his head would explode with it, there it was: the promised shelter.

"I need help!" McCoy called to Adok.

The man merely nodded and received Kirk's slumping body as it slid off the horse. McCoy dismounted and helped carry the Captain inside. It was a large hollow behind a wall of rock and moss. Close, dark and chilled, but mercifully dry. It would have to do.

Adok said, handed two blankets to McCoy. They weren't sopping wet, just damp,

McCoy used one to rub the Captain dry as best as he could, then wrapped him in the other. Kirk started shivering.

"Are we here?" he asked, teeth chattering.

The fearful confusion in his eyes broke the Doctor's heart.

"No, Jim, we're sheltering from the rain."

"Oh, is that what is was?" Kirk whispered. His eyes lost their focus. His head rolled on the clay ground. His breathing was fast and shallow.

There was nothing to make him comfortable. Everything was wet through and through.

"I'm sorry, Jim-" started McCoy.

Kirk's eyes snapped to and found his face instantly. McCoy sucked in his breath, taken aback at the cruel confrontation in them.

"Don't you apologize, Doctor!" the Captain hissed. "You're doing what you can. You _gotta-let-it-go_!"

McCoy sat back, deeply shocked, avoiding Kirk's eye.

Alana approached them warily. She sat on her knees next to McCoy, held out two pieces of sodden biscuit. McCoy, his heart still pounding in his chest, took them gratefully, though he doubted whether he could get anything past the lump in his throat.

"Here, Jim, can you eat?"

Kirk sucked on the biscuit, then accepted a mouthful of water from the canteen. He had no energy left to pay McCoy any more attention.

"The pain?" McCoy asked softly.

"Returning—too tired to care."

His eyes closed.

This alarmed McCoy. He consulted his tricorder.

To Alana had said, "We need to get him warm right now!"

Alana nodded calmly and then McCoy noticed that Adok had already lit a fire. Looking around he realized there was plenty of dry wood stacked in an alcove. The place also had a swept feel to it. Alana had already laid the other blankets all over the rocks.

"Travelers use this cave," she said. "When they use dry wood they replenish it before they leave. He'll be warm soon, Doctor, and the blankets will dry. Please calm yourself."

McCoy swallowed hard. He hadn't realized how agitated he was. His heart was pounding, his face still flushed with the rushing blood of anger. He was _so darn angry _with himself! _Let it go_, Kirk had said. He couldn't. He just couldn't.

"How long do these downpours last?" he asked, turning from the entrance to the cave – the rain thundering down just beyond it – to Alana. He didn't like the look on her face. _More bad news_. He didn't press for an answer.

"We can't wait here until it stops," she said quietly instead. "They're closing in on us again. Very... hungry. But we may rest a few hours."

She got up and went to help Adok with the horses.

McCoy sat, defeated, staring at the rain. Was this what Jim carried with him all the time, the burden of command in a dangerous, indomitable world? He too made decisions blindly, had disaster forced upon him. Yet he always found the strength to find some way through or around, however imperfect. And always, always lived with the consequences. And now that he was at the end of his strength, brought to the brink by agony after agony, McCoy had laid yet another demand on him. Was it anger that McCoy felt? Or was it shame?

He felt a hand on his sleeve.

"Sorry, Bones, for yelling at you."

"No, you're right, Jim. I have to let it go. And I will, you know. Just give me a moment."

Kirk smiled and sank into sleep.


	23. Chapter 23

**I was promised hordes of deranged readers if I didn't update soon. So here's a horde of Juras for you.**

**Chapter 23**

The warm, dry fire and the hour's rest had prevented the Captain from going into shock. He had had some food, water and medicine and had revived sufficiently to get back on the horse. Not that there had been a choice. Alana's sudden agitation was such that she hadn't needed to explain it to them.

Adok, on the other hand, had become duller and duller– puzzling, alarming, but a god-sent, McCoy thought, because the man seemed insensitive to everything including touching Kirk, who, without his help McCoy could never have gotten onto the horse.

Now Kirk was firmly settled in front of the saddle in McCoy's embrace. To ward off shock from the cold they had wrapped him in an oil cloth. The rain pattered noisily, splashing McCoy's face. But his most overwhelming sensation was not the noise of the gurgling forest all around him or the visual concentration needed to penetrate the swarming fog to avoid low-hanging branches, or even the assault of his cold, sodden bones No, it was the atrocious smell of the smokey concoction Alana had smeared on them to ward off the mosquitoes.

Adok handed McCoy the reins and nodded, without making eye contact, as if coming to a decision. He turned and went to Alana, who was waiting for him on the other horse. He touched her on the knee and looked up at her. McCoy caught his devastated look, her saddened smile. He didn't catch what the man said to her, but it was clearly a farewell. Alana nodded. Adok turned and walked away from them, disappearing quickly in the fog.

McCoy opened his mouth to call after him, but refrained. Alana spurred her horse into movement, and they were off.

A mere hour after setting out again she suddenly picked up the pace. This and the fact that she had not even warned him alarmed McCoy. His horse sped up to match her speed and McCoy had no choice but to hold Kirk tighter as they reached a gallop.

"Hold on, Jim!" he yelled.

Kirk was already way ahead of him. He leaned down over the horse's neck and McCoy quickly followed suit to avoid the whipping branches. When their horse leaped over a ditch, it was, incredibly, Kirk who guided their movement, though McCoy felt him trembling through the oil cloth that still separated them but was flapping about.

When he was adjusted to the new pace the Doctor was finally able to look around.

Movement in the fog. How could he have missed it? There. And there!

_They're all around us!_

Hundreds of ghostly bodies were moving in on them.

"Hai!" Alana yelled, spurring her horse to even greater speed. McCoy cursed and held on for dear life, watching them coming out of the fog, tens of Juras, clutches of them, fiery-eyed and possessed, running at them as if their lives depended on it.

But... there was an opening. Alana went for it.

"Hai! Hai!" McCoy yelled.

Their horse bumped a man, a hand raked his leg, then they were through.

Alana did not let up, leaving the horde behind in the fog.

00000000000

Alana seemed to know it the moment Kirk lost consciousness and became dead weight in the Doctor's exhausted arms. She reined in her horse and took advantage of the clearing they were in to fall back and come abreast with the Doctor, slowing to a trot.

"I can't hold him much longer, Alana," McCoy panted.

"But we're close," she said, breathless herself. "Just a little longer."

"Are they near?"

She nodded. "Too near to stop. I'm sorry."

McCoy's legs and arms were trembling from exertion, trying to hold Kirk up and steady in his arms while gripping the horse's flanks with his knees. If the beast hadn't been so broad-backed they would both have tumbled off a long time ago. He knew that a fall like that would kill Kirk instantly. He knew it was only a matter of time.

Suddenly Alana halted her horse.

"What?" McCoy gasped, feeling Kirk slip. "Woh, horse! Alana, what?"

"It's here," she said, looking around.

McCoy, glad his horse had stopped, looked around. The rain had let up, or at least it felt like that, perhaps because the clearing felt less close. He saw nothing but trees, moss, hummocks, and rain. There were no people, no buildings, no walls, no signs of habitation whatsoever.

It happened suddenly. First there was a surging roar behind them. McCoy turned, as much as he could, toward it as it grew into a hair-raising war cry. Then the fog lifted and he knew that there were hundreds of them behind the ten who were in the lead, only a hundred yards away, coming at them fast.

"Look!" Alana called.

The incongruity of her command struck him. He was _looking_, wasn't he? But when she yelled "look!" again, he turned to where _she _was looking: ahead.

And ahead, in the middle of the clearing, stood a man, beckoning.

Where had he come from? He stood far enough away that McCoy couldn't make out his features, but his movements didn't look deranged. A bit hurried, yes, but confident.

"Go to him!" Alana yelled, turning her horse with a harsh yank of her reins and taking off toward the mad horde, which was closing in on them.

McCoy needed no persuasion. Taking control of the reins for the first time in their ride, he kneed his horse into action. The man was now running toward him, yelling, but McCoy couldn't understand him over the deafening din behind him. He glanced back. Alana had reached the first Juras and was blocking hem with her horse, knocking them down, yelling, but it was a matter of seconds before she would be overrun.

He _had_ to get Jim away from those madmen, but who was he taking him to?

Now was the time. Would he go to the man beckoning him? Or would he steer their horse away, to the rim of the forest, and keep running?

McCoy grimaced, grinding his teeth on the agony of holding on to Kirk and the agony of knowing that it was beyond his power now to decide, for he couldn't hold Kirk in the saddle for another hundred yards.

_Let it go,_ he told himself. _Let's go._


	24. Chapter 24

**Sorry, it's short. But a lot happens. **

**Chapter 24**

Jura horses being easy-going animals, the man had no trouble grabbing the reins, slowing the animal to his own running pace and pulling it off its original course.

"Hold him just a little longer!" he yelled up at McCoy.

McCoy scanned the foggy, drenched landscape ahead. Where was the man taking them? There was nothing... He blinked. Some thirty yards away two more men had suddenly appeared. Out of nowhere.

They were holding a stretcher.

"Ai-ai" the first man yelled, pulling the scared, tired horse.

McCoy glanced back and swallowed. How were they going to _do_ this? There were too many, they were too near, too fast. He kicked the horse, willing it to give its last. How would they have time to transfer Kirk to the stretcher? And then what? It was too late, they would be overrun and-

The rain abruptly stopped.

_What? _McCoy thought, but there was no time to reflect. The horse was brought to a halt. Cursing their insanity, McCoy looked back, bracing himself for the assault.

But there was none.

The horde, hundreds of Juras, stood stopped dead no more than twenty yards behind them, disbelief, confusion, _relief_ on their faces.

"They can't see us anymore! Let him down!" called one of the men.

The doctor let the unconscious Captain slide to the waiting arms of the stranger, who received him and expertly guided him onto the stretcher. McCoy jumped off as well and, stumbling a little, glanced back one more time, at Alana, who sat high above the throng on her horse, looking at nothing in particular, searching her field of vision, searching, searching, smiling.

00000000000

"The shield is closing in behind us," the man who had beckoned them told McCoy as they ran. "They won't follow us. There's medical help close. _There_."

McCoy looked up to the edge of the forest and saw a clutch of people waiting for them. A three minute run and they'd be there. He kept his hand on Kirk's chest, trying to steady him against the jostling. Kirk was unconscious, pale as a ghost. He wasn't breathing.

They reached the first trees and were suddenly surrounded by several people, shouting instructions. The stretcher was locked into a wheeled frame, and as McCoy realized the forest floor under their feet had become a ramp. An oxygen mask was placed on Kirks' face as they wheeled him to a structure, half dug into the soil. A door swished open, and they plunged inside.

"He's gone into cardiac arrest! Doctor, cordrazine!"

McCoy took the hypo. _What the hell_, he thought. It was cordrazine, alright. He injected Kirk, whose body convulsed on the stretcher with the sudden surge of the powerful stimulant.

"Hang in there, Jim!" McCoy shouted.

Corridors. A ship. This was a ship. But something was wrong...

One more set of doors. There it was. Sickbay. Biobeds. Respirators. Surgical instruments.

Hope.


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter 25**

_It's over._

How many hours had passed? His head spun. He looked down at his hands, clean for the first time in a week.

_Clean hands._

He brought them to rest on the biobed next to Kirk's body. Of themselves they found Kirk's lifeless, pale hand. The cuts, which had begun to fester, had been healed. That hand was clean too, and cold.

McCoy closed his eyes.

"Doctor, you need to rest now," said the woman.

She had been waiting for them in the Sick Bay and had assisted him. He suspected she was a nurse, or a doctor too. She was well versed in the medical equipment and had helped him overcome his initial unfamiliarity with it. Then she had stepped back to let him work on Kirk, offering readings, instruments, hypos. Now he looked up and saw her for the first time.

She could be Juran, or human. Her face – wizened, he guessed her to be over sixty human years - gave nothing away. In any case, if this were the "haven" from sympathy that Alana had promised, this woman could be a sympathetic Juran. Or human...

He was too tired to think it through.

"Yes, I think I will" - he looked around the sick bay for the first time too, saw the other biobed behind him and, relinquishing Kirk's hand, stumbled over to it - "lie down."

His limbs were leaden, his head spun as the adrenaline rushed out of him.

"Let me know..." he mumbled, then passed out.


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter 26**

Spock monitored the Klingons' activity from the depths of a crater on the Juran moon. There was still just the one Warbird. Two Klingon shuttles were moving back and forth between it and the planet. Chekov, working the communication controls, just then indicated to Spock that he had intercepted a message.

"Mister Spock," he whispered, frowning as he adjusted the earpiece – they were taking the precaution of silence - "the Klingon parties are reporting that the Juran revolt is _over_."

Spock merely inclined his head, encouraging Chekov to gather more information.

"They are—expressing astonishment about how suddenly all the Juras became passive again. What does it mean, Mister Spock?"

Spock didn't hesitate.

"It either means that Doctor McCoy got the Captain to this Witch, or that the Captain is dead."

00000000000

When next he woke it was to a hand squeezing his upper arm.

"Doctor?"

"Jim!" he uttered, wrenching himself from sleep.

"He is conscious, Doctor," said the woman.

McCoy heaved himself up on his elbows and looked over to the other bed.

"I asked you not to wake you," said the Captain, smiling.

McCoy studied the man lying on he tbed. Kirk looked wan, and he clearly didn't have the strength to lift his head, but his smile was bright and the glimmer in his eye fever-free.

"Doctor McCoy did ask me to wake him if anything changed," said the woman.

McCoy tore his eyes off Kirk and studied her briefly. She was smiling too.

He sat up, slid off the bed and took the few steps to the Captain's beside.

"How are you feeling, Jim?"

"Well, Bones," said Kirk. "Not so out of it. Clearer. No pain either – before you ask."

McCoy checked the bio readings above the bed.

"We almost lost you," he said. "You went into deep shock, then cardiac arrest."

"Mm, and then I guess there was... _this_," Kirk said, with a look hand indicating the Sick Bay.

"Ye-es," McCoy drawled, looking at the woman again. "Are you the Witch of Jura?" he asked pointblank.

She laughed raucously, then tempered her amusement and, pursing her lips, said, "That's what they call me, though I am not Juran at all. I am Sellen, from the planet Nimrod. Our ship crashed here eighty-four Juran years ago. Of the twenty-two on board, only six survived. Flight-capacity, communications were out, though we retained basic life functions and, most importantly, our cloak. Realizing that the planet, back then, was as yet unvisited by off-worlders, we decided to stay cloaked. We made forays into the population, passing ourselves off as Juras. Like your Federation, we too abided by a Prime Directive of sorts. We had not much hope that someone would find us. And indeed no one did. I am the last remaining Nimrodian here."

"But surely," Kirk asked, "once Jura was opened by off-worlders - ten years ago now? - you could have contacted your planet and been rescued?"

"Yes, I could have. Asking around discretely I learned that my planet had become a member of the Federation. I could have asked any of the merchants for a ride back home-" Sellen sighed and fell silent for a few seconds, thinking. "You have to understand. I was only fourteen when we crashed here. By the time Jura was opened up and a way off became possible, I had been here for seventy-four years and was the only one of my people left. And – as you can see – I was _not_ alone."

"What do you mean?" Kirk asked.

McCoy realized Kirk had not seen the others waiting behind the shield. Sellen realized it too.

"There are many Jurans here, Captain. Thirty-one to be precise. Of all the _undon_ that came here, we ever lost only one to what we came to call the Sympathetic Syndrome, the inability to cope with individual sympathy."

"Yes," said McCoy, "we figured it out, by the skin of our teeth."

Sellen nodded. "My father, who also survived, was a doctor, and I was apprenticed to him. It took us some years to discover the Juras' communal feeling in the Spirit, and what happens when a Jura looks into a dying fellow beings eyes. We studied this, discovered how the herbs and chants a healer uses to rectify the situation changes the brain chemistry of the afflicted. These severed people are truly tragic. They are truly what off-worlders wrongfully think Juras are: unfeeling. They feel neither personally nor in the Spirit. They are lost, isolated. Taking pity on them, over time we started taking them in. This was not pure altruism, mind you. Our ships energy was depleting and we had to turn off all life support functions in order to keep the proximity sensors and the cloak operative. We needed to start growing food ourselves, to draw water, to gather firewood to keep us warm in Winter. We needed a village. I grew up in this village, it was and is my home. Many stayed, though some reintegrated and spread the word about the Juran Witch, who was, originally, my father."

"Adok?" McCoy asked.

"Yes, Adok is a severed one. When he returned to his world he became my eyes and ears. In the end, he too was not immune to the Captain's _agApay_. We have always had such agents. One time quite early on, one of them told us of a Jura who was beyond the help of the healers: an _agApay_. Father and I sought her out and, thinking we could help her, brought her here. It had this idea, that the cloak would shield her from the Spirit. And it did. We had by then also isolated and purified the chemicals from the healers' medicine and had the capacity to altogether, but she opted _not_ to go that way. She was alone now, which was terrifying, but she still had her feelings. Over time many more _agApay _came who also didn't want the treatment. As you can imagine, soon we had a situation on our hands."

"The _agApay _effect continued, effectively cooking up a little Spirit of its own inside the confines of your cloak," McCoy suggested.

"Oh yes. It gets dicey, to say the least, but we found that, after a period of intense suffering, these Juras adapted: they devolved back to _individual_ sympathy. The cloak that shields you, Captain, from the Juras outside it. Most of the Juras inside _sympathize_ with you, but they do so like I do, or like Doctor McCoy does, and are no threat to you."

"But... that means..." Kirk began.

"Yes, if you had only stayed a little longer in the Spirit, I believe _all_ the Juras on the planet would have regained their capacity to sympathize individually and-"

Sellen abruptly became silent and looked away from them.

It was Kirk who pressed her. "-And they would have continued to fight for their independence against the Klingons?"

"Yes! How exciting it was to see them rise up, to take _action_! I love these people, but hated how off-worlders treated them with disdain, and then how the Klingons simply walked in and took over. However much the Spirit Way is part of them, they do _love_ feeling and yearn for its intensity. I could almost see them regain their capacity for it!"

McCoy looked at Kirk with concern. The Captain had expressed his sympathy for the Juran people from the beginning in much the same terms Sellen had. He had nearly paid for it with his life, but that would not stop him. Before McCoy could intervene, Kirk said:

"Is there a way I can still make a difference?"


	27. Chapter 27

**It's spring. I'm a gardener. Forgive the delays!**

**Chapter 27**

"Now that the Juran revolt is over, Commander Themak will throw all his resources into recapturing the Captain – assuming he is still alive," said Spock to Chekov. "We must find a way of pinpointing the Captain's and the Doctor's whereabouts. We have an approximate idea of where they were going: here." He indicated an area on the screen. "For now we may have the advantage of that knowledge, but it is only a matter of time before Themak's men zone in on it."

"They have men on the ground, Meester Spock. That is to their advantage. We should land."

"Even if we find a way to land there undetected, it could still take us many days to find them. From what I understand the place is well hidden."

Chekov expressed his anxiousness by shaking his head. "The shuttle is not capable of scanning such a large area from this distance. Also, human life signs are not sufficiently different from Juran life signs. But... Meester Spock!" he whispered. "The Warbird must be scanning too. If there is a way for us to _listen in_..."

Spock nodded, picking up some of Chekov's excitement, and both men turned to the consoles.

"We must probe carefully. There, a gap in their security. Themak truly brought the most inexperienced of troops. There, that's their sensor array."

"We may be able to sneak in, Meester Spock. Like so..."

Spock would have smiled had he not been a Vulcan. "Well done, Mister Chekov."

They were in the array, eavesdropping on its searches and findings.

Chekov sighed of relief. "It appears they are scanning a much wider area than we are considering. Perhaps," he added slowly, "we could use a small portion of their array to scan the area we know the Captain to be in? Without their knowledge?"

"It is a risk, but a calculated one," said Spock. "Let's make it work, Mister Chekov!"

00000000000

Sellen regarded the Starfleet Captain with a mixture of hope, admiration, and much anxiety and, yes, she had to face it: guilt.

When her sources told her about what Themak had done to Kirk, and as she monitored the Captain's arduous trek toward her, she had not believed he would make it. There was too much going against him: the severity of his injuries, the escalation of the Juran obsession and their siege of him. But on the other hand, many factors in his favor had converged to tip the balance, then pull him through: the Klingons' unpreparedness, Adok's adept manipulation of the Juran chaos, the healer Selena's expert knowledge of her craft and the Doctor's perseverance.

Sellen was only too aware of the fact that she was not in the line-up of these factors. She had, in fact, purposely stayed out of it.

She could easily have gone out to meet and protect him. She had known at all times where he was, how close his pursuers were. During those days of anxious monitoring she had tried to reach clarity about her goals, her motives. Did she want him to live? What would his death accomplish for the people she loved? Was _she_ the one who was to decide? At what point was his blood on her hands? She never set out to _obstruct_ them, to have a _direct_ hand in his death, but in the end it had been only in that last instance, when not doing so would have been gross negligence, that she had manipulated the cloak and sent her people.

Now it seemed she would still not be spared the decision. His question, "Is there a way I can still make a difference?" had reopened the dilemma. Perhaps his death would not be necessary for the Juran people to achieve freedom – freedom from the Spirit, freedom from Klingon oppression. Perhaps he could achieve it and live. But Sellen was not optimistic. Time was short and he was still very weak, and the Juras would come for him again, much faster now. But was it really _her_ decision? It was really _his_ now, wasn't it? Even if hedecided _not_ to step outside of the cloak...

"Tell me," she said, too vehemently, disgusted with her inability to conquer the complexity, "if the Juras revolt again, will the Federation intervene?"

Kirk's smile was sad and serious. "The Federation's indifference," he said after a long moment's thought, "was based on the perceived indifference of the Juras themselves. If, however, there is an uprising of a free people against their oppressor, in Neutral Space, then I for one will do all I can to make sure the Federation brings all its influence to bear on the situation."

"You sound like a diplomat, choosing your words so carefully," Sellen said bitterly.

"I will not give a promise that I cannot keep, Sellen. But I believe I can promise this: that if the Juran people appeal for help and show that they are _passionate_ – as we know they _can _be – about their freedom and sovereignty, the Federation will have no choice but to consider intervening. Moreover, even just the intention of intervention on the part of the Federation may be enough to make the Klingons back off. Jura has no resources that they covet. Just like,I am ashamed to admit, the Federation, the Klingons merely regard it as an experiment. They will not risk inter-gallactic war over Jura. That" - he held up his hand - "is my honest assessment. _Not_ a promise."

"But Jim," intervened the Doctor, "stepping out there again is suicide! You don't know what's going to happens. The first one may see the light and spare your life, but who says the second one in line will put down his sacrificial dagger and embrace you, in time!"

"Consider, Bones," the Captain interrupted him, "that either way, whether I go out there or stay here, the result is the same. Isn't that so, Sellen?"

He looked at her with those hazel eyes, aglitter with understanding and, she realized with a pang of guilt, pity.

"Yes," she admitted quietly.

"You see," Kirk explained to the Doctor, "It is only a matter of time before Themak finds us and drags us out. Knowing him, he'll make a public execution of it." He turned to Sellen, and his voice became severe, threatening: "And he'll set this planet on fire, a fire that may consume not just the Klingons, but the Juras themselves, and you, Sellen... Is that really what you want? Is that really _what is needed_?"

Sellen felt the color rise to her cheeks. She stood still, couldn't speak.

"I-I don't understand?" McCoy stammered, perplexed.

"There is another option, Doctor," Kirk explained, "one that Sellen is purposely keeping off the table: she contacts the Federation – I am sure that she has the capability – and we are extracted from the planet."

"But, Jim, then the Klingons can just go right ahead, and plunder Jura!" McCoy protested.

"Exactly," said Kirk. "It is revolting to you, as it is to me. But the one who needs to decide whether all of this is worth the risk is not me, nor you, nor the Klingons" - he turned his confronting gaze beck onto Sellen - "but you. _You _are the voice of the Juras now, Sellen. _You_ must decide."


	28. Chapter 28

**Chapter 28**

"No!" McCoy uttered.

His voice stretched tight with anger, his eyes, locked to Kirk's, flashed with disbelief.

"No, no, _no_! I can't believe what you're saying, Jim. It is _not _up to her at all. If there is an easy way for us to get out of here, then _that_ is what needs to happen!"

Kirk said nothing. He looked mortally tired, the dark streaks under his eyes more visible for the paleness of his face. But it was the deep sadness there that seemed to paralyze the Captain. McCoy didn't like the look of it, more so because he could not understand it. He turned to Sellen, livid at her easy manipulation of his friend.

"You can't ask this of him," he pleaded with the older woman. "This is not his fight."

"Us leaving," Kirk said forcefully, but then he held his breath, and it wasn't clear to the Doctor whether it was from physical pain or sad realization. "Us leaving," Kirk reprised quietly, "is not an option."

"For god's sake, Jim, you can't be serious!" McCoy hissed. "She has manipulated the situation from day one! Did she intervene when Themak tortured you? Did she help when we were pursued by those maniacs? You nearly _died_-"

"Doctor," Sellen interrupted him, her voice hoarse with alarm. "Believe when I say that I was not as powerful as you seem to think! Themak's action were entirely beyond my control! It is true that I could have—I could have intervened when you were in the forest but..."

"Bones-"

"No, Jim. What the hell is wrong with-"

McCoy stopped. It was like a cold hand took hold of his heart. How could he have been so clueless!

"The Spirit," he blurted out, "It did something to you too, didn't it? It's not just one-way, you to them. It's them to _you_ too! The influence, the-"

"Sympathy," Kirk finished for him.

Again that tired sadness, which McCoy now understood as resignation. This mission had had plenty of Jim Kirk in deep, deep trouble, but _this_ now, this was even worse, this was too much, and McCoy's heart sank with pity and anger. Still, taking a deep breath, the Doctor drew himself up to full height.

"It is my duty to inform you, Captain," he blazed without holding back, "that you are emotionally compromised!"

00000000000

"Mister Spock," Chekov whispered, barely containing his excitement. "I've located the Witch's haven!"

On the screen, feeding off the Klingon War Bird's sensors, the data delineated a small area.

"It is approximately two square kilometers," Spock concluded. "The cloak is quite sophisticated, reflecting the surroundings so as not to present a vacuum in the area. Still, there is sufficient variance to detect it. It is... Nimrodian."

Chekov shook his head, wincing. "Whatever it is, Mister Spock, it won't be long before the Klingons locate it. Look. Their sensor array is moving in the direction of that area."

00000000000

McCoy was right. Kirk knew it. The realization overwhelmed him with a great grief and a deep sense of betrayal. That he had become so weak, so weak even that he couldn't even muster any anger at himself. True, these last couple of days had done him in. Even after McCoy's administrations of modern medicine, he felt like he wouldn't ever rise from this bed again.

But that was not it, and he knew it. Ever since looking in the eyes of the dying Mayor, he had felt the drain, the pull, as of a vacuum, in the back of his mind, creeping up on him. He shouldn't have given in to it. He should have fought it. It had distracted him in the square, led to their capture. It had given him no relief while he endured Themak's torture. The days after that were a blur of agony and exhaustion, but even there, he remembered, had been the dread of a massive alien presence, sucking at him.

Still, he hadn't accepted the truth of it until McCoy had said it, and with it rushed the realization that he had betrayed himself. His first duty was toward his crew: McCoy, equally in danger, and Spock and the rest of the away Team, and his ship, if it was in the vicinity. He swallowed, fighting the urge to vomit from sheer disgust with himself.

Then with all his might he rallied.

"Sellen," he said, "can you give us a moment?"

The woman, clearly shaken by the conversation, hesitated, then turned and left.

McCoy opened his mouth, but Kirk cut him off with a tired raising of his hand.

"You're right," he said simply. "I _am_ emotionally compromised."

McCoy's look of pity was almost unbearable, and he looked away.

"Explain it to me, Jim," said the good Doctor.

Kirk sighed, locked eyes with his friend again.

"My feeling for these people, for _her_, are overwhelming my concern for my crew, for you. There, as I say it, I know it: I am... no longer myself. All of it is wrong, this planet is wrong. It's pulling at me to make me fit, but I won't, Bones, I _won't_. Help me fight it! God, I'm so tired!"

He closed his eyes, felt McCoy's firm, warm hand on his arm, like an anchor, keeping him moored.

"Can you trust me, Jim," said the Doctor. "Can you keep trusting my judgment?"

"Yes," Kirk whispered.

"Rest, Jim. Sellen will contact the Federation. I will see to it-"

Then they both jumped at the sudden loud alarm, not unlike the claxon on the _Enterprise._


	29. Chapter 29

**Chapter 29**

Sellen burst into the room.

"They found us!"

"Klingons? Are you sure?" McCoy asked, keeping a firm hand on Kirk's arm, trying to make him stay still for just a few more moments.

"Yes, Doctor."

"Can you defend this place? Will the Jurans help us?"

Sellen shook her head, her eyes large with shock. "No defenses, Doctor. We are shifting the shield away from them, but they're sweeping. I'm sure they've detected it and also the control center. In half an hour they will be upon us. Then the shield can repel them for just a few more minutes. They'll figure out how to breach it in no time."

"We need to leave," McCoy said, cursing the world.

He helped Kirk sit up. The Captain was already gasping. He sat hunched over gripping his right side. McCoy had set the worst of the breaks, treated the worst inflammation, and immobilized the arm, but the painkillers would be only half effective if they had to move him.

"It's not going to be that easy, is it, Jim?"

Kirk shook his head, gritting his teeth, beads of sweat popping out over his face.

"Well," McCoy said, "looks like we have no choice. Sellen, where are they?"

"To the west. They must have picked up on the crowd you escaped from, and then found our shield anomaly."

"Where's that crowd?"

"In the same direction. Not far. The Klingons passed through them but an hour ago."

McCoy caught Kirk's eye, and they nodded.

"Then take down the shield, Sellen," said the Doctor. "It will make the Juras come back. They will mess up the Klingons' advance. Do you have a vehicle of some sort? Anything but those damned horses?"

"A small tractor, yes," Sellen said. "It's not fast, but versatile. In the woods it's about the speed of a man running."

"That's better than _this_ man running. Get it ready. Let's go east, get as far away from everyone as we can while this... this Juran adjustment takes place. I sure hope you're right about this, Sellen. And send that message out to any ship that's not Klingon: Captain Kirk's alive. Need help. That sort of thing."

Sellen nodded and approached two Juras standing by for instructions.

"I'm gonna fix you a cocktail of stimulants and painkiller, Jim. I'd rather not but-"

"-Any second out of their clutches counts, Bones," Kirk said softly. Then he became vehement, grabbing the Doctor's arm like a man drowning: "You run, you hear? They're after _me_. They get too close, you _run_!"

McCoy said nothing, but Kirk would not let him go. Then he nodded, grim.

00000000000

"The shield went down!' Spock yelled to Chekov, who was running just a couple of feet to his left.

"What do you think it means, Mister Spock?" the Russian gasped, breathless, leaping over a half-rotted log in the forest duff.

Spock was so much faster and more agile than the human, though the Russian was keeping a pretty good pace. Spock scanned the forest visually. No signs of anyone. He checked his tricorder again. A great crowd, south of them. Running, he tapped the screen, zooming in. A flank of Klingon life signs, closest, then a horde of Juras. All moving fast. _There_, a smaller group, moving away, slower. Too slow.

"Change course, Mister Chekov!" Spock yelled, veering left. "Hurry!"

The calculation was quickly made.

Even if Chekov sped up to Spock's maximum speed, they'd be miss the small group – three life signs, human or Jura – and get caught in the Klingon flank.

Spock slowed down and timed their advance.


	30. Chapter 30

**Chapter 30**

"As fast as a man running," Sellen had said. She should have specified "a _Jura_ running." McCoy would have preferred a faster vehicle, but this is what they had. And anyway, he probably wouldn't have been able to keep up with the two-seater had it gone any faster. As it was he was out of breath, jogging alongside whenever the forest stood aside. The last couple of weeks had been hard on him too...

He glanced at Kirk, strapped into the passenger seat. The Captain endured the jostling with clenched teeth in an ashen face, protectively hugging his arm and side. Still the Doctor could tell that it wouldn't be the pain as the exhaustion that was going to send Jim Kirk into unconsciousness again.

McCoy grimaced. What were they _doing_? Ah yes, running. Again they were on the run, getting as far away from anyone. There was some vague destination: an abandoned grain storage tower on the edge of the forest. And beyond that? Maybe they should have stayed under the protection of the shield a little longer?

He cursed his proclivity for send-guessing his own decisions, even those that brooked no alternatives whatsoever. How did Jim do it?

But now _he _was in charge. And this was their course.

Sellen, who was at the wheel, suddenly turned to look back.

"What?" McCoy rasped, also glancing over his shoulder.

There was movement there among the shrubs and the trees.

"Klingons! Go faster!" McCoy called.

"I can't, Doctor. This is the maximum speed!"

McCoy glanced back again. The Klingons, on foot, were already noticeably closer. Another couple of minutes and they'd be upon them. Someone yelled "Halt!" and a phaser bolt shot past them. It shook McCoy to the core. He realized he had nothing to defend himself with.

"Stop!"

Sellen's head whipped around to him.

"Stop the tractor," McCoy repeated. "That shot was aimed to miss. They won't kill us, but they'll kill you. Run back, around them, and find out how far behind the Juras are. Then... Oh, I don't know, _talk_ to them! Go, NOW!"

Sellen, eyes huge with fear, nodded frantically, brought the vehicle to a halt and jumped off.

McCoy leaped into the drivers seat and got the thing going again as best he could, steering away from her. She looked back, then ran.

00000000000

When they were finally surrounded McCoy knew Sellen had gotten away safely. That was something, at least. The Klingon in charge was something else. Seeing Kirk in such a state and probably afraid to kill him if he harmed him any further, the massive humanoid rounded on McCoy.

"You cannot hide from us, _human_," he sneered, giving McCoy's shoulder a hard shove so the Doctor fell awkwardly backward into the duff. McCoy quickly scrambled back to his feet while the group around him laughed. His assailant got ready to do more damage, when a communicator bleeped.

"Sargeant," said one of the Klingons, probably the communications officer of this squadron, "they are not to be harmed, Sir!"

The Sargeant's sneer was less humorous now. McCoy moved to push through to where Kirk was still sitting in the tractor, but he was held back.

"Wait till Themak gets here," the Klingon breathed into his face. "He will have Kirk, and I will have you. Then you too will know a Klingon's ire!"

"Sure, sure," McCoy responded, "pick on someone half your size!"

Steeling himself not to flinch at the Klingon's feint, he cursed this approximation of Kirkian bravado. Still, it felt good – at least under the protection of, ironically, Themak – and he had a little taste of why Jim Kirk so often antagonized his assailants. The disdain in the Klingon Sergeant's was visibily mixed with confusion and a considerable loss of control.

Still, they were in deep trouble. Jim sat by ashen-faced, only semi-conscious. The fact that none of the Klingons even so much as touched him was a good indicator of his condition.

A shimmer caught his eye, and all turned to three materializing figures.

00000000000

Spock eyed the field warily from their hidden vantage point on the edge of the forest. The Juras, he estimated, were close to a hundred. They were moving fast, driven by a hungry passion, in the direction of the two human lifeforms – the third, which their sensors had identified as a Nimrodian, had broken off and was running back, toward Spock and Chekov. But the two had been caught by the twelve Klingons.

Spock hoped these twelve would be sufficient to protect the Captain and the Doctor, because it was crucial now to keep that whole group from transporting to the Warbird.

"Eagle One," Spock spoke into his communicator.

"Aye, Eagle Two," the Scotsman responded immediately, token of the crew's continuous vigilance aboard the _Enterprise. _

They had maintained radio silence, but the situation, Spock knew, was going to coming to a head, and it was time to throw all caution to the wind.

"Code Seven."

"Aye!"

It would take Scott a few minutes to get the _Enterprise_ into a position from which to disrupt the Warbird's transporter.

"Mister Spock," Chekov, at his side, exclaimed. "Three more Klingons are materializing!"

_Themak._

Spock, already grim, gave as near a Vulcan frown as was possible. That made a Scylla of fifteen and a Charybdis of hundreds.


End file.
